
Class _EiiSiLS_a 



CilBOaGHT DEPOSIE 



Beautiful Thoughts 

FROM 

John Ruskin 



NEW YORK 

JAMES POTT & COMPANY 

1908 






UBRARY of CONGRESS 
I wu Copies tiecovdtf 

JUL 23 1908 



Copyright, 1908, by 
JAMES POTT & CO. 



JANUARY 



January ist. 
You ask for freedom of thought ; 
but if you have not sufficient grounds 
for thought, you have no business to 
think ; and if you have sufficient 
grounds, you have no business to 
think wrong. Only one thought is 
possible to you if you are wise — 
your liberty is geometrically propor- 
tionate to your folly. 

— The Queen of the Air. 

January 2d, 
It has been said — it ought always 
to be said, for it is true, — that a bet- 
ter and more honorable offering is 
made to our Master in ministry to 
the poor, in extending the knowledge 



6 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of His name, in the practice of the 
virtues by which that name is hal- 
lowed, than in material presents to 
His temple. Assuredly it is so : 
woe to all who think that any other 
kind or manner of offering may in 
any wise take the place of these ! 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

I 

January jd. 
Let the reader consider seriously 
what he would give at any moment 
to have the power of arresting the 
fairest scenes, those which so often 
rise before him only to vanish ; to 
stay the cloud in its fading, the leaf 
in its trembling, and the shadows in 
their changing ; to bid the fitful foam 
be fixed upon the river, and the rip- 
ples be everlasting upon the lake ; 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 



and then to bear away with him no 
darkness or feeble sun-stain (though 
even that is beautiful), but a counter- 
type, in allegory, simile, or personifi- 
cation, which deeply enforce them. 

— Frondes Agrestcs. 

January 4th. 
The greatest efforts of the race 
have always been traceable to the 
love of praise, as its greatest catastro- 
phes to the love of pleasure. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

January ^th. 
For I do not speak, nor have I 
ever spoken, since the time of first 
forward youth, in any proselyting 
temper, as desiring to persuade any 
one to believe anything ; but whom- 



8 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

soever I venture to address, I take 
for the time his creed as I find it, and 
endeavor to push it into such vital 
fruit as it seems capable of 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

January 6th. 
Not in the wantonness of wealth, 
not in vain ministry to the desire of 
the eyes or the pride of life, were 
those marbles hewn into transparent 
strength, and those arches arrayed in 
the colors of the iris. There is a 
message written in the dyes of them, 
that once was written in blood ; and 
a sound in the echoes of their vaults, 
that one day shall fill the vault of 
heaven, — " He shall return, to do 
judgment and justice." The strength 
of Venice was given her, so long as 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 



she remembered this ; her destruction 
found her when she had forgotten 
this; and it found her irrevocably, 
because she forgot it without excuse. 

— Stoties of Venice. 

January Jth. 
No one ever gets wiser by doing 
wrong, nor stronger. You will get 
wiser and stronger only by doing 
right, whether forced or not ; the 
prime, the one need is to do M^/, 
under whatever compulsion, until you 
can do it without compulsion. And 
then you are a Man. 

— The Queen of the Air. 

January 8th. 
Of all that they have, His tithe 
must be rendered to Him, or in so 
far and in so much He is forgotten : 



10 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of the skill and of the treasure, of the 
strength and of the mind, of the time 
and of the toil, offering must be made 
reverently ; and if there be any differ- 
ence between the Levitical and the 
Christian offering, it is that the latter 
may be just so much the wider in its 
range as it is less typical in its meaning, 
as it is thankful instead of sacrificial. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

January gth. 
He who habituates himself in his 
daily life to seek for the stern facts 
in whatever he hears or sees, will 
have these facts again brought before 
him by the involuntary imaginative 
power, in their noblest associations; 
and he who seeks for frivolities and 
fallacies, will have frivolities and fal- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 11 

lacies again presented to him in his 
dreams. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

January loth. 
Without venturing to pronounce 
— since on such a matter human 
judgment is by no means conclusive 
— what is or is not the noblest of 
God's works, we may yet admit so 
much of Pope's assertion as that an 
honest man is among his best works 
presently visible, and, as such things 
stand, a somewhat rare one ; but not 
an incredible or miraculous work ; 
still less an abnormal one. 

— Unto this Last. 

January nth. 
And shall we not look with changed 
temper down the long perspective of 



12 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

St. Mark's Place towards the seven- 
fold gates and glowing domes of its 
temple, when we know with what 
solemn purpose the shafts of it were 
lifted above the pavement of the pop- 
ulous square ? Men met there from 
all countries of the earth, for traffic or 
for pleasure ; but, above the crowd 
swaying for ever to and fro in the 
restlessness of avarice or thirst of 
delight, was seen perpetually the 
glory of the temple, attesting to 
them, whether they would hear or 
whether they would forbear, that 
there was one treasure which the 
merchantmen might buy without a 
price, and one delight better than all 
others, in the word and the statutes 
of God. 

— Stones of Venice. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 13 

January I2th. 
Imitation is like charity. When 
it is done for love it is lovely ; when 
it is done for show, hateful. 

— The Queen of the Air, 

January 13th. 

I believe the first test of a truly 
great man is his humility. I do not 
mean by humiHty, doubt of his own 
power, or hesitation of speaking his 
opinions ; but a right understanding 
of the relation between what he can 
do and say, and the rest of the world's 
sayings and doings. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

January 14th, 
It can never be shown generally 
either that the interests of master and 



14 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

laborer are alike, or that they are op- 
posed ; for, according to circumstan- 
ces, they may be either. It is, indeed, 
always the interest of both that the 
work should be rightly done, and a just 
price obtained for it ; but, in the divi- 
sion of profits, the gain of the one may 
or may not be the loss of the other. 
It is not the master's interest to pay 
wages so low as to leave the men sickly 
and depressed, nor the workman's in- 
terest to be paid high wages if the 
smallness of the master's profit hinders 
him from enlarging his business, or 
conducting it in a safe and liberal way. 

— Unto this Last. 

January i^th. 
The Greek race was not at all one 
of exalted beauty, but only of general 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 15 

and healthy completeness of form. 
They were only, and could be only, 
beautiful in body to the degree that 
they were beautiful in soul (for you 
will find, when you read deeply into 
the matter, that the body is only the 
soul made visible). 

— T/ie Quee7i of the Air. 

January i6th. 
It will be seen, that 1 am no advo- 
cate for meanness of private habita- 
tion. I would fain introduce into it 
all magnificence, care, and beauty, 
where they are possible ; but I would 
not have that useless expense in un- 
noticed fineries or formalities; corni- 
cing of ceilings and graining of doors, 
and fringing of curtains, and thou- 
sands such; things which have become 



16 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

foolishly and apathetically habitual 
— things on whose common appli- 
ance hang whole trades, to which there 
never yet belonged the blessing of giv- 
ing one ray of real pleasure, or becom- 
ing of the remotest or most contempt- 
ible use — things which cause half the 
expense of life, and destroy more than 
half its comfort, manliness, respecta- 
bility, freshness and facility. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

January lyth- 
All great men not only know their 
business, but usually know that they 
know it : and are not only right in 
their main opinions, but they usually 
know that they are right in them ; only 
they do not think much of themselves 
on that account. 

— Frondes Agrestes, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 17 

January i8th. 
For all books are divisible into two 
classes, the books of the hour, and 
the books of all time. Mark this 
distinction — it is not one of quality 
only. It is not merely the bad book 
that does not last, and the good one 
that does. It is a distinction of 
species. There are good books for 
the hour, and good ones for all time ; 
bad books for the hour and bad ones 
for all time. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

January igth. 
Our eyes are now familiar and 
wearied with writing ; and if an in- 
scription is put upon a building, un- 
less it be large and clear, it is ten to 
one whether we ever trouble ourselves 



18 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

to decipher it. But the old architect 
was sure of readers. He knew that 
every one would be glad to decipher 
all that he wrote ; that they would 
rejoice in possessing the vaulted 
leaves of his stone manuscript ; and 
that the more he gave them, the more 
grateful would the people be. We 
must take some pains, therefore, 
when we enter St. Mark's, to read 
all that is inscribed, or we shall not 
penetrate into the feeling either of 
the builder or of his times. 

— Stones of Venice. 

January 20th. 
I have always found that the less 
we speak of our intentions, the more 
chance there is of our realizing them. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 19 

January 2ist. 
God never forgets any work or 
labor of love ; and whatever it may- 
be of which the first and best por- 
tions or powers have been presented 
to Him, He will multiply and in- 
crease sevenfold. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

January 22d. 
Fancy plays like a squirrel in its 
circular prison, and is happy ; but 
Imagination is a pilgrim on the earth 
— and her home is in heaven. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

January 2^d. 
The natural and right system re- 
specting all labor is, that it should 
be paid at a fixed rate, but the good 



20 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

workmen employed, and the bad 
workmen unemployed. The false, 
unnatural, and destructive system is 
when the bad workman is allowed 
to offer his work at half price, and 
either take the place of the good, or 
force him by his competition to work 
for an inadequate sum. 

— Unto this Last. 

January 24th. 
Was any woman, do you suppose, 
ever the better for possessing dia- 
monds ? but how many have been 
made base, frivolous, and miserable 
by desiring them ? Was ever man 
the better for having coffers full of 
gold ? But who shall measure the 
guilt that is incurred to fill them ? 
Look into the history of any civil- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 21 

ized nations ; analyze, with reference 
to this one cause of crime and mis- 
ery, the Hves and thoughts of their 
nobles, priests, merchants, and men 
of luxurious life. Every other temp- 
tation is at last concentrated into this ; 
pride, and lust, and envy, and anger 
all give up their strength to avarice. 
The sin of the whole world is essen- 
tially the sin of Judas. Men do not 
disbelieve their Christ, but they sell 
Him. 

—Ethics of the Dust. 

January 2^th. 
We are none of us so good archi- 
tects as to be able to work habitually 
beneath our strength ; and yet there 
is not a building that I know of, 
lately raised, wherein it is not suffi- 



22 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

ciently evident that neither architect 
nor builder has done his best. It is 
the especial characteristic of modern 
work. All old work nearly has been 
hard work. It may be the hard work 
of children, of barbarians, of rustics ; 
but it is always their utmost. Ours 
has as constantly the look of money's 
worth, of a stopping short wherever 
and whenever we can, of a lazy com- 
pliance with low conditions ; never 
of a fair putting forth of our strength. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

January 26th, 
So natural is it to the human heart 
to fix itself in hope rather than in 
present possession, and so subtle is 
the charm which the imagination casts 
over what is distant or denied, that 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 23 

there is often a more touching power 
in the scenes which contain far-away 
promises of something greater than 
themselves, than in those which ex- 
haust the treasures and powers of 
nature in an unconquerable and ex- 
cellent glory, leaving nothing more 
to be by fancy pictured or pursued. 

— Frondes Agrestes, 

January 2yth. 
Do you know, if you read this, 
that you cannot read that — that what 
you lose to-day you cannot gain to- 
morrow ? Will you go and gossip 
with your housemaid, or your stable- 
boy, when you may talk with queens 
and kings ; or flatter yourselves that it 
is with any worthy consciousness of 
your own claims to respect that you 



24 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

jostle with the common crowd for 
entree here and audience there, when 
all the while this eternal court is open 
to you, with its society wide as the 
world, multitudinous as its days, the 
chosen, and the mighty, of every 
place and time ? 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



January 28th, 
I have above spoken of the whole 
church as a great Book of Common 
Prayer ; the mosaics were its illumi- 
nations, and the common people of 
the time were taught their Scripture 
history by means of them, more im- 
pressively perhaps, though far less 
fully, than ours are now by Scripture 
reading. They had no other Bible, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 25 

and — Protestants do not often enough 
consider this — could have no other* 
We find it somewhat difficult to fur- 
nish our poor with printed Bibles ; 
consider what the difficulty must have 
been when they could be given only in 
manuscript. The walls of the church 
necessarily became the poor man's 
Bible, and a picture was more easily 
read upon the walls than a chapter. 

— Stones of Venice. 



January 2gth. 
Covetousness is not natural to man 
— generosity is ; but covetousness 
must be excited by a special cause, as 
a given disease by a given miasma ; 
and the essential nature of a material 
for the excitement of covetousness, is 



26 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

that it shall be a beautiful thing which 
can be retained without a use. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

January joth. 
It is a strange thing how little in 
general people know about the sky. 
It is the part of creation in which 
Nature has done more for the sake 
of pleasing man — more for the sole 
and evident purpose of talking to him, 
and teaching him — than in any other 
of her works ; and it is just the part 
in which we least attend to her. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

January Jist, 
Philosophically, it does not, at first 
sight, appear reasonable (many writers 
have endeavored to prove it unreason- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 27 

able) that a peaceable and rational 
person, whose trade is buying and sell- 
ing, should be held in less honor than 
an unpeaceable and often irrational 
person, whose trade is slaying. Nev- 
ertheless, the consent of mankind has 
always, in spite of the philosophers, 
given precedence to the soldier. 

— C/nio this Last. 



FEBRUARY 



February ist. 
If there is no rest which remaineth 
for you, is there none you might pres- 
ently take ? was this grass of the earth 
made green for your shroud only, not 
for your bed ? and can you never lie 
down upon it, but only under it ? 
The heathen, in their saddest hours, 
thought not so. They knew that life 
brought its contest, but they expected 
from it also the crown of all contests. 

— The Crmvn of Wild Olive. 

February 2d, 

The practical, immediate office of 

the earthquake and pestilence is to 

slay us, like moths ; and, as moths, 

we shall be wise to live out of their 



32 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

way. So the practical, immediate of- 
fice of gold and diamonds is the mul- 
tiplied destruction of souls (in what- 
ever sense you have been taught to 
understand that phrase) ; and the pa- 
ralysis of wholesome human effort 
and thought on the face of God's 
earth : and a wise nation will live out 
of the way of them. The money 
which the English habitually spend 
in cutting diamonds would, in ten 
years, if it were applied to cutting 
rocks instead, leave no dangerous 
reef nor difficult harbor round the 
whole island coast. 

—Ethics of the Dust. 

February jd. 
But so it is, that, while precious 
materials may, with a certain profu- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 33 

sion and negligence, be employed for 
the magnificence of what is seldom 
seen, the work of man cannot be 
carelessly and idly bestowed, without 
an immediate sense of wrong ; as if 
the strength of the living creature 
were never intended by its Maker to 
be sacrificed in vain, though it is well 
for us sometimes to part with what 
we esteem precious of substance, as 
showing that in such service it be- 
comes but dross and dust. 

— T/te Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

February ^th. 
Very ready we are to say of a 
book, " How good this is — that's ex- 
actly what I think ! " But the right 
feeling is, " How strange that is ! I 
never thought of that before, and yet 



34 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

I see it is true ; or if I do not now, 
I hope I shall, some day." But 
whether thus submissively or not, at 
least be sure that you go to the au- 
thor to get at his meaning, not to find 
yours. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

February ^th. 
Twenty years ago, there was no 
lovelier piece of lowland scenery in 
South England, nor any more pa- 
thetic in the world, by its expression 
of sweet human character and life, 
than that immediately bordering on 
the sources of the Wandel, and in- 
cluding the low moors of Addington, 
and the villages of Beddington and 
Carshalton, with all their pool and 
streams. No clearer or diviner wa- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 35 

ters ever sang with constant lips of 
the hand which "giveth rain from 
heaven ;" no pastures ever Hghtened 
in springtime with more passionate 
blossoming ; no sweeter homes ever 
hallowed the heart of the passer-by 
with their pride of peaceful gladness 
— fain-hidden — yet full-confessed. 

— T/ie Crown of Wild Olive, 

February 6th. 
It is impossible to calculate the 
enormous loss of power in modern 
days, owing to the imperative require- 
ment that art shall be methodical and 
learned : for as long as the constitu- 
tion of this world remains unaltered, 
there will be more intellect in it than 
there can be education ; there will be 
many men capable of just sensation 



36 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and vivid invention, who never will 
have time to cultivate or polish their 
natural powers. And all unpolished 
power is in the present state of society 
lost ; in other things as well as in the 
arts, but in the arts especially : nay, 
in nine cases out of ten, people mis- 
take the polish for the power. 

— Stones of Venice. 

February yth. 
All one's life is a music, if one 
touches the notes rightly, and in time. 
But there must be no hurry. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

February 8th. 
And as the captain of a ship is 
bound to be the last man to leave the 
ship in case of wreck, and to share 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 37 

his last crust with the sailors in case 
of famine, so the manufacturer, in any 
commercial crisis or distress, is bound 
to take the suffering of it with the 
men, and even to take more of it for 
himself than he allows his men to 
feel; as a father would in a famine, 
ship-wreck, or battle, sacrifice himself 
for his son. 

— Unto this Last. 

February gth. 
I think that every rightly consti- 
tuted mind ought to rejoice, not so 
much in knowing anything clearly, as 
in feehng that there is infinitely more 
which it cannot know. None but 
proud or weak men would mourn over 
this, for we may always know more, 
if we choose, by working on ; but the 



38 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

pleasure is, I think, to humble people, 
in knowing that the journey is endless, 
the treasure inexhaustible, — watching 
the cloud still march before them with 
its summitless pillar, and being sure 
that, to the end of time, and to the 
length of eternity, the mysteries of its 
infinity will open farther and farther, 
their dimness being the sign and nec- 
essary adjunct of their inexhaustible- 
ness. 

^Frondes Agrestes. 

February loth. 
People are always talking of per- 
severance, and courage, and fortitude ; 
but patience is the finest and worthi- 
est part of fortitude, — and the rarest, 
too. I know twenty persevering girls 
for one patient one ; but it is only 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 39 

that twenty-first who can do her work 
out and out, or enjoy it. For patience 
Hes at the root of all pleasures, as well 
as of all powers. Hope herself ceases 
to be happiness when Impatience com- 
panions her. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

February nth. 
All else for which the builders sac- 
rificed, has passed away — all their liv- 
ing interests, and aims, and achieve- 
ments. We know not for what 
they labored, and we see no evidence 
of their reward. Victory, wealth, au- 
thority, happiness — all have departed, 
though bought by many a bitter sac- 
rifice. But of them, and their life 
and their toil upon the earth, one 
reward, one evidence, is left to us in 



40 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

those gray heaps of deep-wrought 
stone. They have taken with them 
to the grave their powers, their hon- 
ors, and their errors ; but they have 
left us their adoration. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

February 12th. 
As the Creator of all the worlds, 
and the Inhabiter of eternity, we can- 
not behold Him ; but as the Judge 
of the earth and the Preserver of 
men, those heavens are indeed His 
dwelling-place : " Swear not, neither 
by heaven, for it is God's throne ; 
) nor by the earth, for it is His foot- 
stool ! " And all those passings to 
and fro of fruitful showers and grate- 
ful shade, and all those visions of 
silver palaces built about the hori- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 41 

zon, and voices of moaning winds 
and threatening thunders, and glories 
of colored robe and cloven ray, are 
but to deepen in our hearts the ac- 
ceptance, and distinctness, and dear- 
ness of the simple words, " Our 
Father, which art in heaven." 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

February ijth. 
Let the accent of words be watched, 
by all means, but let their meaning be 
watched more closely still, and fewer 
will do the work. A few words well 
chosen and well distinguished, will 
do the work that a thousand cannot, 
when every one is acting, equivocally, 
in the function of another. Yes ; and 
words, if they are not watched, will 
do deadly work sometimes. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



42 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

February 14th, 
What we think, or what we know, 
or what we beheve, is in the end, of 
Httle consequence. The only thing 
of consequence is what we do : and 
for man, woman or child, the first 
point of education is to make them 
do their best. It is the law of good 
economy to make the best of every- 
thing. How much more to make 
the best of every creature ! 

— The Crcnvn of Wild Olive. 



February i^th. 
It was, indeed, a morning that 
might have made any one happy, 
even with no Golden River to seek 
for. Level lines of dewy mist lay 
stretched along the valley, out of 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 43 

which rose the massy mountains — 
their lower cKfFs in pale gray shadow, 
hardly distinguishable from the float- 
ing vapor, but gradually ascending 
till they caught the sunlight, which 
ran in sharp touches of ruddy color 
along the angular crags, and pierced, 
in long level rays, through their 
fringes of spear-like pine. Far above, 
shot up red splintered masses of cas- 
tellated rock, jagged and shivered 
into myriads of fantastic forms, with 
here and there a streak of sunlit snow, 
traced down their chasms like a line 
of forked lightning ; and, far beyond, 
and far above all these, fainter than 
the morning cloud, but purer and 
changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the 
utmost peaks of the eternal snow. 

— The King of the Golden River. 



44 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

February i6th. 
Let every man who wishes well to 
his country, render it yearly an ac- 
count of his income, and of the main 
heads of his expenditure ; or, if he is 
ashamed to do so, let him no more 
impute to the poor their poverty as 
a crime, nor set them to break stones 
in order to frighten them from com- 
mitting it. To lose money ill is in- 
deed often a crime ; but to get it ill 
is a worse one, and to spend it ill, 
worst of all. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

February lyth. 
For as religious faith renders emo- 
tion facile, so also it generally renders 
expression simple ; that is to say a 
truly religious painter will very often 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 45 

be ruder, quainter, simpler, and more 
faulty in his manner of working, than 
a great irreligious one. And it was 
in this artless utterance, and simple 
acceptance, on the part of both the 
workman and the beholder, that all 
noble schools of art have been cradled ; 
it is in them that they must be cradled 
to the end of time. 

— Stones of Venice. 

February i8th. 
You ought to be glad in thinking 
how much more beauty God has made, 
than human eyes can ever see ; but 
not glad in thinking how much more 
evil man has made, than his own soul 
can ever conceive, much more than 
his hands can ever heal. 

—Ethics of the Dust. 



46 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

February igth. 
What is really desired, under the 
name of riches, is, essentially, power 
over men ; in its simplest sense, the 
power of obtaining for our own ad- 
vantage the labor of servant, trades- 
man, and artist ; in wider sense, au- 
thority of directing large masses of 
the nation to various ends (good, 
trivial, or hurtful, according to the 
mind of the rich person). 

— Unto this Last. 

February 20th, 
Of all inorganic substances, acting 
in their own proper nature, and with- 
out assistance and combination, water 
is the most wonderful. If we think 
of it as the source of all the change- 
fulness and beauty which we have seen 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 47 

in clouds, — then, as the instrument 
by which the earth we have contem- 
plated was modelled into symmetry, 
and its crags chiselled into grace ; — 
then, as in the form of snow, it robes 
the mountains it has made with that 
transcendent light which we could not 
have conceived if we had not seen ; 
— then, as it exists in the foam of the 
torrent, in the iris which spans it, in 
the morning mist which rises from it, 
in the deep crystalline pools which 
mirror its hanging shore, in the broad 
lake and glancing river ; — finally, in 
that which is to all human minds the 
best emblem of unwearied, uncon- 
querable power, the wild, various, fan- 
tastic, tameless unity of the sea ; — 
what shall we compare to this mighty, 
this universal element, for glory and 



48 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

beauty ? or how shall we follow its 
eternal changefulness of feeling ? 

— Frondes Agresies. 

February 2ist. 
^ It is only the fool who does wrong, 
and says he " did it for the best." 
And if there's one sort of person in 
the world that the Bible speaks harder 
of than another, it is fools. Their par- 
ticular and chief way of saying " There 
is no God " is this, of declaring that 
whatever their " public opinion" may 
be, is right, and that God's opinion is 
of no consequence. 

/"N — Ethics of the Dtist. 

February 22d. 
How difficult must the maintenance 
of that authority be, which, while it 



FROM JOHX RUSKIN 49 

has to restrain the hostilit)' of all the 
worst principles of man, has also to re- 
strain the disorders of his best — which 
is continually assaulted by the one 
and betrayed by the other, and which 
regards with the same severity the 
lightest and the boldest violations of 
its law ! There are some faults slight 
in the sight of love, some errors slight 
in the estimate of wisdom ; but truth 
forgives no insult, and endures no 
stain. 

— TA^ Sezen Lamps of Architecture. 

February 2jd. 
The hills, which, as compared with 
living beings, seem " everlasting," are 
in truth as perishing as they ; its veins 
of flowing fountain weary the moun- 
tain heart, as the crimson pulse does 



50 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

ours ; the natural force of the iron 
crag is abated in its appointed time, 
like the strength of the sinews in a 
human old age ; and it is but the lapse 
of the longer years of decay which, in 
the sight of its Creator, distinguishes 
the mountain range from the moth 
and the worm. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

February 2^th 
We talk of food for the mind, as of 
food for the body : now a good book 
contains such food inexhaustibly ; it is 
a provision for life, and for the best 
part of us ; yet how long most people 
would look at the best book before 
they would give the price of a large 
turbot for it ! 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 51 

February 2^th. 
No teacher can truly promote the 
cause of education, until he knows the 
mode of life for which that education 
is to prepare his pupil. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

February 26th. 
The likeness to a beloved friend, 
the correspondence with a habitual 
conception, the freedom from any 
strange or offensive particularity, and, 
above all, an interesting choice of in- 
cident, will win admiration for a pic- 
ture when the noblest efforts of re- 
ligious imagination would otherwise 
fail of power. How much more, 
when to the quick capacity of emo- 
tion is joined a childish trust that the 
picture does indeed represent a fact ! 



52 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

It matters little whether the fact be 
well or ill told ; the moment we be- 
lieve the picture to be true, we com- 
plain little of its being ill-painted. 

— Stones of Venice. 



February 2jth. 
No one can be forced to do a 
wrong thing, for the guilt is in the 
will ; but you may any day be forced 
to do a fatal thing, as you might be 
forced to take poison ; the remarka- 
ble law of nature in such cases being, 
that it is always unfortunate jy^« who 
are poisoned, and not the person who 
gives you the dose. It is a very 
strange law, but it is a law. Nature 
merely sees to the carrying out of 
the normal operation of arsenic. She 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 53 

never troubles herself to ask who 
gave it you. So also you may be 
starved to death, morally as well as 
physically, by other people's faults. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



February 28th. 
It would be as absurd to think it 
an evil that all the world is not fit 
for us to inhabit, as to think it an 
evil that the globe is no larger than 
it is. As much as we shall ever need 
is evidently assigned to us for our 
dwelling-place ; the rest, covered 
with rolHng waves or drifting sands, 
fretted with ice or crested with fire, 
is set before us for contemplation in 
an uninhabitable magnificence. 

— Frondes Agrestes, 



5i BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

February 2gth, 
There is also a confused notion in 
the minds of many persons, that the 
gathering of the property of the poor 
into the hands of the rich does no ul- 
timate harm ; since, in whosesoever 
hands it may be, it must be spent at 
last, and thus, they think, return to 
the poor again. This fallacy has 
been again and again exposed ; but 
granting the plea true the same apol- 
ogy may, of course, be made for 
blackmail, or any other form of rob- 
bery. It might be (though practi- 
cally it never is) as advantageous for 
the nation that the robber should 
have the spending of the money he 
extorts, as that the person robbed 
should have spent it. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive, 



MARCH 



March 1st. 
Men must either hereafter live, or 
hereafter die ; fate may be bravely 
met, and conduct wisely ordered, on 
either expectation ; but never in hes- 
itation between ungrasped hope, and 
unconfronted fear. We usually be- 
lieve in immortality, so far as to avoid 
preparation for anything after death. 
Whereas, a wise man will at least 
hold himself ready for one or other 
of two events, of which one or other 
is inevitable ; and will have all things 
ended in order for his sleep, or left 
in order for his awakening. 

— The Crown of IVild Olive, 



58 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March 2d, 
When he had climbed for an hour, 
he got dreadfully thirsty, and was 
going to drink like his brothers, 
when he saw an old man coming 
down the path above him, looking 
very feeble, and leaning on a staff. 
" My son," said the old man, " I am 
faint with thirst, give me some of 
that water." Then Gluck looked at 
him, and when he saw that he was 
pale and weary, he gave him the 
water ; " Only pray don't drink it 
all," said Gluck. But the old man 
drank a great deal, and gave him 
back the bottle two-thirds empty. 
Then he bade him good speed, and 
Gluck went on again merrily. And 
the path became easier to his feet, 
and two or three blades of grass ap- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 59 

peared upon it, and some grass- 
hoppers began singing on the bank 
beside it ; and Gluck thought he had 
never heard such merry singing. 

— T^e Kmg of the Golden River. 

March jd. 
Thus, it is a creed with a great 
part of the existing English people, 
that they are in possession of a book 
which tells them, straight from the 
lips of God, all they ought to do, 
and need to know. I have read that 
book, with as much care as most of 
them, for some forty years ; and am 
thankful that, on those who trust it, 
I can press its pleadings. My en- 
deavor has been uniformly to make 
them trust it more deeply than they 
do ; trust it, not in their own favorite 



60 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

verses only, but in the sum of all ; 
trust it not as a fetish or talisman, 
which they are to be saved by daily 
repetitions of; but as Captain's order, 
to be heard and obeyed at their 
peril. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

March 4th, 
Do you think that your goodness 
comes all by your own contriving ? 
or that you are gentle and kind be- 
cause your dispositions are naturally 
more angelic than those of the poor 
girls who are playing, with wild eyes, 
on the dust-heaps in the alleys of our 
great towns ; and who will one day 
fill their prisons, or, better, their 
graves ? Heaven only knows where 
they, and we who have cast them 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 61 

there, shall stand at last. But the 
main judgment question will be, I 
suppose, for all of us, " Did you keep 
a good heart through it ? " What 
you were, others may answer for ; 
what you tried to be, you must an- 
swer for yourself Was the heart 
pure and true ? tell us that. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

March ^th. 
We are too much in the habit of 
looking at falsehood in its darkest as- 
sociations, and through the color of 
its worst purposes. That indignation 
which we profess to feel at deceit ab- 
solute, is indeed only at deceit mali- 
cious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy, 
and treachery, because they harm us, 
not because they are untrue. Take 



62 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the detraction and the mischief from 
the untruth, and we are Httle offended 
by it ; turn it into praise, and we may 
be pleased with it. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



March 6th. 
We take our idea of fearlessness 
and sublimity alternately from the 
mountains and the sea ; but we asso- 
ciate them unjustly. The sea-wave, 
with all its beneficence, is yet devour- 
ing and terrible ; but the silent wave 
of the blue mountain is lifted towards 
heaven in a stillness of perpetual 
mercy ; and the one surge, unfathom- 
able in its darkness, the other un- 
shaken in its faithfulness, forever bear 
the seal of their appointed symbolism : 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 63 

" Thy righteousness is like the great 
mountains ; 

^^ Thy judgments are a great deep." 

— Frondes Agrestes. 



March yth. 
Though there have been men who 
have pinched their stomachs and bared 
their backs to buy a book, whose 
libraries were cheaper to them, I think, 
in the end, than most men's dinners 
are. We are few of us put to such 
trial, and more the pity ; for, indeed, 
a precious thing is all the more 
precious to us if it has been won by 
work or economy ; and if public li- 
braries were half as costly as public 
dinners, or books cost the tenth part 
of what bracelets do, even foolish men 



66 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

deed find yourself to be in any wise 
any of these. Take steady means to 
check yourself in whatever fault you 
have ascertained, and justly accused 
yourself of And as soon as you are 
in active way of mending, you will be 
no more inclined to moan over an un- 
defined corruption. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



March loth. 
Mountains are to the rest of the 
body of the earth what violent mus- 
cular action is to the body of man. 
The muscles and tendons of its anat- 
omy are, in the mountain, brought 
out with force and convulsive en- 
ergy, full of expression, passion, and 
strength ; the plains and the lower 



FROM JOHN RVSKIN 67 

hills are the repose and the effortless 
motion of the frame, when its muscles 
lie dormant and concealed beneath 
the lines of its beauty, — yet ruling 
those lines in their every undula- 
tion. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 



March nth, 
I have been long accustomed, as 
all men engaged in work of investi- 
gation must be, to hear my state- 
ments laughed at for years before 
they are examined or believed ; and 
I am generally content to wait the 
public's time. But it has not been 
without displeased surprise that I 
have found myself totally unable, as 
yet, by any repetition, or illustration, 



68 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

to force this plain thought into my 
readers' heads, — that the wealth of 
nations, as of men, consists in sub- 
stance, not in ciphers ; and that the 
real good of all work, and of all com- 
merce, depends on the final intrinsic 
worth of the thing you make, or get 
by it, 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



March 1 2 th. 
Do not think of your faults, still 
less of others' faults. In every per- 
son who comes near you, look for 
what is good and strong ; honor that, 
rejoice in it, and, as you can, try to 
imitate it, and your faults will drop 
off like dead leaves, when their time 
comes. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 69 

March 13th, 
I do not mean to diminish the 
blame of the injurious and malicious 
sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity ; 
yet it seems to me, that the shortest 
way to check the darker forms of de- 
ceit is to set watch more scrupulous 
against those which have mingled un- 
regarded and unchastised with the 
current of our life. Do not let us lie 
at all. Do not think of one falsity as 
harmless, and another as slight, and 
another as unintended. Cast them all 
aside : they may be light and acci- 
dental ; but they are an ugly soot from 
the smoke of the pit, for all that ; and 
it is better that our hearts should be 
swept clean of them, without over care 
as to which is largest or blackest. 

— The Seven Lamps 0/ Architecture. 



68 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

to force this plain thought into my 
readers' heads, — that the wealth of 
nations, as of men, consists in sub- 
stance, not in ciphers ; and that the 
real good of all work, and of all com- 
merce, depends on the final intrinsic 
worth of the thing you make, or get 
by it. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



March 12th. 
Do not think of your faults, still 
less of others' faults. In every per- 
son who comes near you, look for 
what is good and strong ; honor that, 
rejoice in it, and, as you can, try to 
imitate it, and your faults will drop 
off like dead leaves, when their time 
comes. 

— Ethics of the Dust, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 69 

March ijth. 
I do not mean to diminish the 
blame of the injurious and maHcious 
sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity ; 
yet it seems to me, that the shortest 
way to check the darker forms of de- 
ceit is to set watch more scrupulous 
against those which have mingled un- 
regarded and unchastised with the 
current of our life. Do not let us lie 
at all. Do not think of one falsity as 
harmless, and another as slight, and 
another as unintended. Cast them all 
aside : they may be light and acci- 
dental ; but they are an ugly soot from 
the smoke of the pit, for all that ; and 
it is better that our hearts should be 
swept clean of them, without over care 
as to which is largest or blackest. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



70 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March 14th, 
The greater part of the profitable 
investment of capital, in the present 
day, is in operations of this kind, in 
which the public is persuaded to buy 
something of no use to it, on produc- 
tion or sale of which the capitalist 
may charge percentage ; the said pub- 
lic remaining all the while under the 
persuasion that the percentages thus 
obtained are real national gains, 
whereas, they are merely filchings out 
of partially light pockets, to swell 
heavy ones. 

— The Crmvn of Wild Olive. 
\ 

March i^th. 
There are no natural objects out of 
which more can be learned than out 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 71 

of Stones. They seem to have been 
created especially to reward a patient 
observer. Nearly all other objects in 
nature can be seen to some extent 
without patience, and are pleasant 
even in being half seen. Trees, 
clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even 
by the careless ; but the stone under 
his foot has, for carelessness, nothing 
in it but stumbling ; no pleasure is 
languidly to be had out of it, nor 
food, nor good of any kind ; nothing 
but symbolism of the hard heart, and 
the unfatherly gift. And yet, do but 
give it some reverence and watchful- 
ness, and there is bread of thought in 
it, more than in any other lowly fea- 
ture of all the landscape. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 



72 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March i6th. 
The more I have examined the 
subject the more dangerous I have 
found it to dogmatize respecting the 
character of the art which is likely, 
at a given period, to be most useful 
to the cause of religion. One great 
fact first meets me. I cannot answer 
for the experience of others, but I 
never yet met with a Christian whose 
heart was thoroughly set upon the 
world to come, and, so far as human 
judgment could pronounce, perfect 
and right before God, who cared 
about art at all. 

— Stones of Venice. 

March lyth. 
If, on looking back, your whole 
life should seem rugged as a palm-tree 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 73 

Stem ; still, never mind, so long as it 
has been growing, and has its grand 
green shade of leaves and weight of 
honeyed fruit at top. And even if 
you cannot find much good in your- 
self at last, think that it does not 
much matter to the universe either 
what you were, or are ; think how 
many people are noble, if you cannot 
be, and rejoice in fheir nobleness. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

March i8th. 
As we pass between the hills which 
have been shaken by earthquake and 
torn by convulsion, we find that 
periods of perfect repose succeed 
those of destruction. The pools of 
calm water lie clear beneath their 
fallen rocks, the water-HHes gleam, 



74 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and the reeds whisper among their 
shadows ; the village rises again over 
the forgotten graves, and its church 
tower, white through the storm-light, 
proclaims a renewed appeal to His 
protection in whose hand " are all 
the corners of the earth, and the 
strength of the hills is His also." 
There is no loveliness of Alpine val- 
ley that does not teach the same les- 
son. It is just where " the mountain 
falling Cometh to nought, and the 
rock is removed out of his place," 
that in process of years the fairest 
meadows bloom between the frag- 
ments, the clearest rivulets murmur 
from between their crevices among 
the flowers, and the clustered cot- 
tages, each sheltered beneath some 
strength of mossy stone, now to be 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 75 

removed no more, and with their 
pastured flocks around them, safe 
from the eagle's stoop and the wolf's 
ravin, have written upon their fronts, 
in simple words, the mountain's faith 
in the ancient promise, — " Neither 
shalt thou be afraid of destruction, 
when it cometh ; for thou shalt be in 
league with the stones of the field, 
and the beasts of the field shall be at 
peace with thee." 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

March igth. 
You can know what you are only 
by looking out of yourself Measure 
your own powers with those of 
others ; compare your own interests 
with those of others ; try to under- 
stand what you appear to them, as 



76 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

well as what they appear to you ; and 
judge of yourselves, in all things, 
relatively and sub-ordinately, not pos- 
itively ; starting always with a whole- 
some conviction of the probability 
that there is nothing particular about 
you. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

March 20th. 
To speak and act truth with con- 
stancy and precision is nearly as diffi- 
cult, and perhaps as meritorious, as 
to speak it under intimidation or 
penalty ; and it is a strange thought 
how many men there are, as I trust, 
who would hold to it at the cost of 
fortune or life, for one who would 
hold to it at the cost of a little daily 
trouble. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 77 

March 2ist. 
Wonderful, in universal adaptation 
to man's need, desire, and discipline, 
God's daily preparation of the earth 
for him, with beautiful means of life. 
First, a carpet, to make it soft for 
him ; then a colored fantasy of em- 
broidery thereon ; then, tall spread- 
ing of foliage to shade him from sun- 
heat, and shade also the fallen rain, 
that it may not dry quickly back into 
the clouds, but stay to nourish the 
springs among the moss. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

March 22d. 

I observe that men of business 

rarely know the meaning of the word 

" rich." At least, if they know, they 

do not in their reasonings allow for 



78 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the fact that it is a relative word, im- 
plying its opposite " poor " as posi- 
tively as the word " north " implies 
its opposite " south." Men nearly 
always speak and write as if riches 
were absolute, and it were possible, 
by following certain scientific pre- 
cepts, for everybody to be rich. 
Whereas riches are a power like that 
of electricity, acting only through in- 
equalities or negations of itself The 
force of the guinea you have in your 
pocket depends wholly on the de- 
fault of a guinea in your neighbor*s 
pocket. If he did not want it, it 
would be of no use to you ; the de- 
gree of power it possesses depends 
accurately upon the need or desire 
he has for it — and the art of making 
yourself rich, in the ordinary mercan- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 79 

tile economist's sense, is therefore 
equally and necessarily the art of 
keeping your neighbor poor. 

— Unto this Last. 

March 2jd. 
Thus the Renaissance manner of 
building is a convenient style for 
dwelling-houses, but the natural sense 
of all religious men causes them to 
turn from it with pain when it has 
been used in churches ; and this has 
given rise to the popular idea that 
the Roman style is good for houses 
and the Gothic for churches. This 
is not so ; the Roman style is essen- 
tially base, and we can bear with it 
only so long as it gives us conven- 
ient windows and spacious rooms ; the 
moment the question of convenience 



80 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

is set aside, and the expression or 
beauty of the style is tried by its be- 
ing used in a church, we find it fails. 
But because the Gothic and Byzan- 
tine styles are fit for churches they 
are not therefore less fit for dwellings. 

— Stones of Venice, 

March 24th. 
So, something which befalls you 
may seem a great misfortune ; you 
meditate over its effects on you per- 
sonally, and begin to think that it is 
a chastisement, or a warning, or a this 
or that or the other of profound sig- 
nificance, and that all the angels in 
heaven have left their business for 
a little while that they may watch 
its effects on your mind. But give 
up this egotistic indulgence of your 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 81 

fancy ; examine a little what misfor- 
tunes, greater a thousandfold, are 
happening every second to twenty 
times worthier persons, and your self- 
consciousness will change into pity 
and humility, and you will know your- 
self, so far as to understand that " there 
hath nothing taken thee but what is 
common to man." 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

March 2^th. 
If ever in autumn a pensiveness 
falls upon us, as the leaves drift by 
in their fading, may we not wisely 
look up in hope to their mighty mon- 
uments ? Behold how fair, how far 
prolonged in arch and aisle, the av- 
enues of the valleys, the fringes of the 
hills ! so stately, — so eternal ; the joy 



82 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of man, the comfort of all living 
creatures, the glory of the earth, — 
they are but the monuments of those 
poor leaves that flit faintly past us to 
die. Let them not pass, without our 
understanding their last counsel and 
example : that we also, careless of 
monument by the grave, may build 
it in the world — monument by which 
men may be taught to remember, not 
where we died, but where we lived. 

— Frondes Agrestes, 



March 26th, 
No book is worth anything which 
is not worth much ; nor is it servicable, 
until it has been read, and reread, and 
loved, and loved again ; and marked, 
so that you can refer to passages you 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 83 

want in it, as a soldier can seize the 
weapon he needs in an armory, or a 
housewife bring the spice she needs 
from her store. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

March 2yth. 
And for all of us, the question is 
not at all to ascertain how much or 
how little corruption there is in hu- 
man nature, but to ascertain whether, 
out of all the mass of that nature, we 
are of the sheep or the goat breed ; 
whether we are people of upright 
heart, being shot at, or people of 
crooked heart, shooting. And of all 
the texts bearing on the subject, this, 
which is a quite simple and practical 
order, is the one you have chiefly to 
hold in mind. " Keep thy heart with 



84 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

all diligence, for out of it are the is- 
sues of life.'* 

—Ethics of the Dust. 

March 28th, 
Speaking truth is like writing fair, 
and comes only by practice ; it is less 
a matter of will than of habit, and I 
doubt if any occasion can be trivial 
which permits the practice and forma- 
tion of such a habit. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



March 2gth. 
Flowers seem intended for the sol- 
ace of ordinary humanity : children 
love them ; quiet, contented, ordinary 
people love them as they grow ; lux- 
urious and disorderly people rejoice 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 85 

in them gathered ; they are the cot- 
tager's treasure ; and in the crowded 
town, mark, as with a little broken 
fragment of rainbow, the windows of 
the workers in whose hearts rests the 
covenant of peace. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

March joth. 
Inequalities of wealth, unjustly es- 
tablished, have assuredly injured the 
nation in which they exist during 
their establishment ; and, unjustly 
directed, injure it yet more during 
their existence. But inequalities of 
wealth, justly established, benefit the 
nation in the course of their estab- 
lishment ; and, nobly used, aid it yet 
more by their existence. 

— Unto this Last. 



86 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

March Jist, 
Bread of flour is good : but there 
is bread, sweet as honey, if we would 
eat it, in a good book ; and the fam- 
ily must be poor indeed which, once 
in their lives, cannot, for such multi- 
pliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's 
bill. We call ourselves a rich nation, 
and we are filthy and foolish enough 
to thumb each other's books out of 
circulating libraries ! 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



APRIL 



April 1st. 
Just as there are many principles 
which will bear the light of the world's 
opinion, yet will not bear the light of 
God's word, while all principles which 
will bear the test of Scripture will also 
bear that of practice, so in architecture 
there are many forms which expedi- 
ency and convenience may apparently 
justify, or at least render endurable, 
in daily use, which will yet be found 
offensive the moment they are used 
for church service ; but there are none 
good for church service, which can- 
not bear daily use. 

— Stones of Venice, 



90 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

April 2d, 
I mean, and always have meant, 
simply this, — that the will of God re- 
specting us is that we shall live by 
each other's happiness and life, not 
by each other's misery or death. I 
made you read that verse which so 
shocked you just now, because the 
relations of parent and child are typ- 
ical of all beautiful human help. A 
child may have to die for its parents ; 
but the purpose of Heaven is that it 
shall live for them ; that, not by its 
sacrifice, but by its strength, its joy, 
its force of being, it shall be to them 
renewal of strength, and as the arrow 
in the hand of the giant. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 91 

April jd. 
Perhaps few people have ever asked 
themselves why they admire a rose so 
much more than all other flowers. 
If they consider, they will find, first, 
that red is, in a delicately gradated 
state, the loveliest of all pure colors ; 
and, secondly, that in the rose there 
is no shadow^ except what is composed 
of color. All its shadows are fuller 
in color than its lights, owing to the 
translucency and reflective power of 
the leaves. 

— Frondes Agresies. 



April 4th, 
When men are rightly occupied, 
their amusement grows out of their 
work, as the color-petals out of a 



92 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

fruitful flower ; — when they are faith- 
fully helpful and compassionate, all 
their emotions become steady, deep, 
perpetual, and vivifying to the soul 
as the natural pulse to the body. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



April ^th. 
Wilful error is limited by the will, 
but what limit is there to that of which 
we are unconscious ? 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



April 6th, 

Men help each other by their joy, 

not by their sorrow. They are not 

intended to slay themselves for each 

other, but to strengthen themselves 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 93 

for each other. And among the 
many apparently beautiful things 
which turn, through mistaken use, to 
utter evil, I am not sure but that the 
thoughtlessly meek and self-sacrific- 
ing spirit of good men must be named 
as one of the fatalest. They have so 
often been taught that there is a vir- 
tue in mere suffering, as such, and 
foolishly to hope that good may be 
brought by Heaven out of all on 
which Heaven itself has set the stamp 
of evil, that we may avoid it, that 
they accept pain and defeat as if these 
were their appointed portion ; never 
understanding that their defeat is not 
the less to be mourned because it is 
more fatal to their enemies than to 
them. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



94 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

April yth. 
It is necessary to our rank as spir- 
itual creatures, that we should be able 
to invent and to behold what is not ; 
and to our rank as moral creatures, 
that we should know and confess at 
the same time that it is not. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



April 8th, 
The whole question, therefore, re- 
specting not only the advantage, but 
even the quantity, of national wealth, 
resolves itself finally into one of ab- 
stract justice. It is impossible to 
conclude, of any given mass of ac- 
quired wealth, merely by the fact of 
its existence, whether it signifies good 
or evil to the nation in the midst of 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 95 

which it exists. Its real value de- 
pends on the moral sign attached to 
it, just as sternly as that of a mathe- 
matical quantity depends on the alge- 
braical sign attached to it. 

— Unto this Last. 



April gth. 
For indeed the fact is, that there are 
idle poor and idle rich ; and there are 
busy poor and busy rich. Many a 
beggar is as lazy as if he had ten thou- 
sand a year ; and many a man of large 
fortune ib busier than his errand-boy, 
and never would think of stopping in 
the street to play marbles. So that, 
in a large view, the distinction be- 
tween workers and idlers, as between 
knaves and honest men, runs through 



96 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the very heart and innermost nature 
of men of all ranks and in all posi- 
tions. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



April loth. 
There is no sacredness in round 
arches, nor in pointed ; none in pin- 
nacles, nor in buttresses ; none in pil- 
lars, nor traceries. Churches were 
larger than most other buildings, 
because they had to hold more peo- 
ple ; they were more adorned than 
most other buildings, because they 
were safer from violence, and were 
the fitting subjects of devotional of- 
fering : but they were never built in 
any separate, mystical, and religious 
style ; they were built in the manner 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 97 

that was common and familiar to 
everybody at the time. 

— Stones of Venice. 

April nth. 
The one thing that a good man 
has to do, and to see done, is justice ; 
he is neither to slay himself nor oth- 
ers carelessly : so far from denying 
himself, since he is pleased by good, 
he is to do his utmost to get his 
pleasure accomplished. 

—Ethics of the Dust. 

April I2th, 
There is a curious type of us given 
in one of the lovely, neglected works 
of the last of our great painters. It 
is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale 
churchyard, and of its brook, and 



98 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

valley, and hills, and folded morning 
sky beyond. And unmindful alike 
of these, and of the dead who have 
left these for other valleys and for 
other skies, a group of schoolboys 
have piled their little books upon a 
grave, to strike them off with stones. 
So do we play with the words of the 
dead that would teach us, and strike 
them far from us with our bitter, reck- 
less will, Httle thinking that those 
leaves which the wind scatters had 
been piled, not only upon a grave- 
stone, but upon the seal of an en- 
chanted vault — nay, the gate of a 
great city of sleeping kings, who 
would awake for us, and walk with 
us, if we knew but how to call them 
by their names. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 99 

April IJth. 
Gather a single blade of grass, 
and examine for a minute quietly its 
narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted 
green. Nothing, as it seems, there 
of notable goodness or beauty. A 
very little strength and a very little 
tallness, and a few delicate long Hnes 
meeting in a point, — not a perfect 
point neither, but blunt and unfin- 
ished, by no means a creditable or 
apparently much-cared-for example 
of Nature's workmanship, made, 
only to be trodden on to-day, and 
to-morrow to be cast into the oven, — 
and a little pale and hollow stalk, fee- 
ble and flaccid, leading down to the 
dull brown fibres of roots. And yet, 
think of it well, and judge whether, 
of all the gorgeous flowers that beam 



100 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

in summer air, and of all strong and 
goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes, or 
good for food, — stately palm and pine, 
strong ash and oak, scented citron, 
burdened vine — there be any by man 
so deeply loved, by God so highly 
graced, as that narrow point of feeble 
green. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 



April 14th, 
In the daily course and discipline 
of right life, we must continually and 
reciprocally submit and surrender in 
all kind and courteous and affection- 
ate ways ; and these submissions and 
ministries to each other, of which you 
all know (none better) the practice 
and the preciousness, are as good for 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 101 

the yielder as the receiver ; they 
strengthen and perfect as much as 
they soften and refine. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



April i^th. 
In recalling the impressions we 
have received from the works of man, 
after a lapse of time long enough to 
involve in obscurity all but the most 
vivid, it often happens that we find a 
strange pre-eminence and durability 
in many upon whose strength we had 
little calculated, and that points of 
character which had escaped the de- 
tection of the judgment, become de- 
veloped under the waste of memory ; 
as veins of harder rock, whose places 
could not at first have been dis- 



102 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

covered by the eye, are left salient 
under the action of frosts and streams. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

April i6th. 
Any given accumulation of com- 
mercial wealth may be indicative, on 
the one hand, of faithful industries, 
progressive energies, and productive 
ingenuities : or, on the other, it may 
be indicative of mortal luxury, mer- 
ciless tyranny, ruinous chicane. Some 
treasures are heavy with human tears, 
as an ill-stored harvest with untimely 
rain ; and some gold is brighter in 
sunshine than it is in substance. 

— Unto this Last. 

April lyth. 
He only is advancing in life, whose 
heart is getting softer, whose blood 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 103 

warmer, whose brain quicker, whose 
spirit is entering into Living peace. 
And the men who have this life in 
them are the true lords or kings of 
the earth — they, and they only. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

April i8th. 
There is a working class — strong 
and happy, — among both rich and 
poor ; there is an idle class — weak, 
wicked, and miserable, — among both 
rich and poor. And the worst of the 
misunderstandings arising between the 
two orders come of the unlucky fact 
that the wise of one class [how little 
wise in this !] habitually contemplate 
the foolish of the other. If the busy 
rich people watched and rebuked the 
idle rich people, all would be right 



104 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

among them : and if the busy poor 
people watched and rebuked the idle 
poor people, all would be right among 
them. But each looks for the faults 
of the other. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



April igth. 
We have destroyed the goodly 
architecture of our cities ; we have 
substituted one wholly devoid of 
beauty or meaning; and then we 
reason respecting the strange effect 
upon our minds of the fragments 
which, fortunately, we have left in 
our churches, as if those churches 
had always been designed to stand 
out in strong relief from all the 
buildings around them, and Gothic 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 105 

architecture had always been, what it 
is now, a religious language, like 
Monkish Latin. 

— Stones of Venice. 

April 20th. 
Briefly, the constant duty of every 
man to his fellows is to ascertain his 
own powers and special gifts, and to 
strengthen them for the help of 
others. Do you think Titian would 
have helped the world better by de- 
nying himself, and not painting ; or 
Casella by denying himself, and not 
singing ! 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

April 2 1 St. 
Go out in the springtime among 
the meadows that slope from the 



106 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots 
of their lower mountains. There, 
mingled with the taller gentians, and 
the white narcissus, the grass grows 
deep and free ; and as you follow 
the winding mountain path, beneath 
arching boughs, all veiled with blos- 
som — paths that forever droop and 
rise over the green banks and 
mounds sweeping down in scented 
undulation steep to the blue water, 
studded here and there with new- 
mown heaps filling all the air with 
fainter sweetness, — look up towards 
the higher hills, where the waves of 
everlasting green roll silently into 
their long inlets among the shadows 
of the pines ; and we may perhaps at 
last know the meaning of those quiet 
words of the 147th Psalm, " He ma- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 107 

keth grass to grow upon the moun- 
tains." 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

April 2 2d. 
I want you to feel, with me, that 
whatever advantages we possess in 
the present day in the diffusion of 
education and of Hterature, can only 
be rightly used by any of us when we 
have apprehended clearly what edu- 
cation is to lead to, and literature to 
teach. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

April 2jd. 
You ladies like to lead the fash- 
ion : — by all means lead it — lead it 
thoroughly, — lead it far enough. 
Dress yourselves nicely, and dress 



108 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

everybody else nicely. Lead the 
fashions for the poor first ; make 
them look well, and you yourselves 
will look, in ways of which you have 
now no conception, all the better. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

April 24th. 
There is but one way in which 
man can ever help God — that is, by 
letting God help him ; and there is 
no way in which His name is more 
guiltily taken in vain, than by calling 
the abandonment of our own work 
the performance of His. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

April 2^th. 
All building, therefore, shows man 
either as gathering or governing ; and 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 109 

the secrets of his success are his 
knowing what to gather, and how to 
rule. These are the two great in- 
tellectual Lamps of Architecture ; 
the one consisting in a just and hum- 
ble veneration for the works of God 
upon the earth, and the other in an 
understanding of the dominion over 
those works which has been vested in 
man. 

— TAe Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

April 26th. 
The most helpful and sacred work 
which can at present be done for hu- 
manity, is to teach people (chiefly by 
example, as all best teaching must be 
done) not how " to better them- 
selves," but how to " satisfy them- 
selves." It is the curse of every evil 



110 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

nature and evil creature to eat and 
not be satisfied. The words of bless- 
ing are, that they shall eat and be 
satisfied ; and as there is only one 
kind of water which quenches all 
thirst, so there is only one kind of 
bread which satisfies all hunger — the 
bread of justice or righteousness ; 
which hungering after, men shall al- 
ways be filled, that being the bread 
of Heaven ; but hungering after the 
bread or wages of unrighteousness, 
shall not be filled, that being the 
bread of Sodom. 

— Frondes Agresles. 

April 2yth. 
So far as I know, there is not in 
history record of anything so dis- 
graceful to the human intellect as the 



FROM JOHN RVSKIN 111 

modern idea that the commercial 
text, " Buy in the cheapest market 
and sell in the dearest," represents, 
or under any circumstances could rep- 
resent, an available principle of na- 
tional economy. Buy in the cheap- 
est market ? — yes ; but what made 
your market cheap ? Charcoal may 
be cheap among your roof timbers 
after a fire, and bricks may be cheap 
in your streets after an earthquake ; 
but fire and earthquake may not 
therefore be national benefits. Sell 
in the dearest ? — yes, truly ; but what 
made your market dear ? You sold 
your bread well to-day : was it to a 
dying man who gave his last coin for 
it, and will never need bread more ; 
or to a rich man who to-morrow will 
buy your farm over your head ; or to 



112 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

a soldier on his way to pillage the 
bank in which you have put your 
fortune ? 

— Unto this Last. 



April 28th. 
We attach, in modern days, a kind 
of sacredness to the pointed arch and 
the groined roof, because, while we 
look habitually out of square windows 
and live under flat ceilings, we meet 
with the more beautiful forms in the 
ruins of our abbeys. But when those 
abbeys were built, the pointed arch 
was used for every shop door, as well 
as for that of the cloister, and the 
feudal baron and freebooter feasted, 
as the monk sang, under vaulted 
roofs ; not because the vaulting was 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 113 

thought especially appropriate to 
either the revel or psalm, but because 
it was then the form in which a strong 
roof was easiest built. 

— stones of Venice. 



April 2gth. 
God is a kind Father. He sets us 
all in the places where He wishes us 
to be employed ; and that employ- 
ment is truly " our Father's business." 
He chooses work for every creature 
which will be delightful to them, if 
they do it simply and humbly. He 
gives us always strength enough, and 
sense enough, for what He wants us 
to do ; if we either tire ourselves or 
puzzle ourselves, it is ourselves, it is 
our own fault. And we may always 



114 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

be sure, whatever we are doing, that 
we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are 
not happy ourselves. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

April jot h. 
We cannot determine what the 
queenly power of women should be, 
until we are agreed what their ordi- 
nary power should be. We cannot 
consider how education may fit them 
for any widely extending duty, until 
we are agreed what is their true con- 
stant duty. And there never was a 
time when wilder words were spoken, 
or more vain imagination permitted, 
respecting this question— quite vital 
to all social happiness. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



MAY 



May 1st. 
Men will be taught that an exist- 
ence of play, sustained by the blood 
of other creatures, is a good existence 
for gnats and jelly-fish ; but not for 
men : that neither days, nor lives, 
can be made holy or noble by doing 
nothing in them : that the best prayer 
at the beginning of a day is that we 
may not lose its moments ; and the 
best grace before meat, the conscious- 
ness that we have justly earned our 
dinner. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

May 2d, 
All the world is but as one orphan- 
age, so long as its children know not 



118 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

God their Father; and all wisdom 
and knowledge is only more bewil- 
dered darkness, so long as you have 
not taught them the fear of the Lord. 

— Fors Clavigera. 



May jd. 
The essential idea of real virtue 
is that of a vital human strength, 
which instinctively, constantly, and 
without motive does what is right. 
You must train men to this by habit, 
as you would the branch of a tree; 
and give them instincts and manners 
(or morals) of purity, justice, kind- 
ness, and courage. Once rightly 
trained, they act as they should, ir- 
respectively of all motive, of fear, or 
of reward. It is the blackest sign 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 119 

of putrescence in a national religion 
when men speak as if it were the only- 
safeguard of conduct, and assume 
that, but for the fear of being burned, 
or for the hope of being rewarded, 
everybody would pass their lives in 
lying, stealing, and murdering. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



May 4th. 
In the edifices of Man there should 
be found reverent worship and fol- 
lowing, not only of the spirit which 
rounds the pillars of the forest, and 
arches the vault of the avenue — which 
gives veining to the leaf, and polish 
to the shell, and grace to every pulse 
that agitates animal organization, — 
but of that also which reproves the 



120 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

pillars of the earth, and builds up her 
barren precipices into the coldness of 
the clouds, and lifts her shadowy 
cones of mountain purple into the 
pale arch of the sky. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

May ^th. 

To any person who has all his 
senses about him, a quiet walk, over 
not more than ten or twelve miles of 
road a day, is the most amusing of 
all travelling ; and all travelling be- 
comes dull in exact proportion to its 
rapidity. 

Going by railroad I do not consider 
as travelling at all ; it is merely " be- 
ing sent *' to a place, and very little 
different from becoming a parcel. 

— Frondes Agrestet, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 121 

May 6th, 
Many joys may be given to men 
which cannot be bought for gold, and 
many fidehties found in them which 
cannot be rewarded with it. 

— Unto this Last. 



May 'Jth. 
The relations of the womanly to 
the manly nature, their different ca- 
pacities of intellect or of virtue, seem 
never to have been yet measured with 
entire consent. We hear of the mis- 
sion and of the rights of Woman, as 
if these could ever be separate from 
the mission and the rights of Man ; — 
as if she and her lord were creatures 
of independent kind and of irrecon- 
cilable claim. This, at least, is wrong. 



122 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

And not less wrong — perhaps even 
more foolishly wrong (for I will 
anticipate thus far what I hope to 
prove) — is the idea that woman is 
only the shadow and attendant image 
of her lord, owing him a thoughtless 
and servile obedience, and supported 
altogether in her weakness by the pre- 
eminence of his fortitude. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

May 8th. 
It would be easier to illustrate a 
crest of Scottish mountain, with its 
purple heather and pale harebells at 
their fullest and fairest, or a glade of 
Jura forest, with its floor of anemone 
and moss, than a single portico of St. 
Mark's, 

"^Stones of Venice, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 123 

May gth. 
There is always a considerable 
quantity of pride, to begin with, in 
what is called " giving one's self to 
God." As if one had ever belonged 
to anybody else ! 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

May loth. 
It does not need much to humiliate 
a mountain. A hut will sometimes 
do it ; I never look up to the Col de 
Balme from Chamouni, without a vi- 
olent feeling of provocation against 
its hospitable little cabin, whose bright 
white walls form a visibly four-square 
spot on the green ridge, and entirely 
destroy all idea of its elevation. A 
single villa will often mar a whole 
landscape, and dethrgne a dynasty of 



124 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

hills ; and the Acropolis of Athens, 
Parthenon and all, has, I believe, 
been dwarfed into a model by the pal- 
ace lately built beneath it. The fact 
is, that hills are not so high as we 
fancy them, and, when to the actual 
impression of no mean comparative 
size, is added the sense of the toil of 
manly hand and thought, a sublimity 
is reached, which nothing but gross 
error in arrangement of its parts can 
destroy. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

May nth. 
It assumes this, because its masters 
knew that the first and necessary 
impulse of every truly taught and 
knightly heart is this of Wind service 
to its lady \ that where that true faith 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 125 

and captivity are not, all wayward and 
wicked passion must be ; and that in 
this rapturous obedience to the single 
love of his youth, is the sanctification 
of all man's strength, and the con- 
tinuance of all his purposes. And 
this, not because such obedience 
would be safe, or honorable, were it 
ever rendered to the unworthy ; but 
because it ought to be impossible for 
every noble youth — it is impossible 
for every one rightly trained — to love 
any one whose gentle counsel he can- 
not trust, or whose prayerful com- 
mand he can hesitate to obey. 

— sesame and Lilies. 

May I2th. 
The power of enjoying Music is 
like the power of distinguishing tastes 



126 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

in food, a naturally implanted faculty ; 
the power of being gratified by Paint- 
ing is either the acquired taste of a 
cultivated mind, or the peculiar gift 
of an elevated intellect. 

— PrcBterita. 

May ijth. 
Now, it is quite true that a person 
of beautiful mind, dwelling on what- 
ever appears to them most desirable 
and lovely in a possible future, will 
not only pass their time pleasantly, 
but will even acquire, at last, a vague 
and wildly gentle charm of manner 
and feature, which will give them an 
air of peculiar sanctity. 

—Ethics of the Dust. 

May 14th, 
The Romanesque arch is beautiful 
as an abstract line. Its type is al- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 127 

ways before us in that of the appar- 
ent vault of heaven, and horizon of 
the earth. The cylindrical pillar is 
always beautiful, for God has so 
moulded the stem of every tree that 
is pleasant to the eyes. The pointed 
arch is beautiful ; it is the termina- 
tion of every leaf that shakes in sum- 
mer wind, and its most fortunate as- 
sociations are directly borrowed from 
the trefoiled grass of the field, or from 
the stars of its flowers. Farther than 
this, man's invention could not reach 
without frank imitation. His next 
step was to gather the flowers them- 
selves, and wreathe them in his capi- 
tals. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



128 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May isth, 
I believe an immense gain in the 
bodily health and happiness of the 
upper classes would follow on their 
steadily endeavoring, however clum- 
sily, to make the physical exertion they 
now necessarily exert in amusements, 
definitely serviceable. It would be 
far better, for instance, that a gentle- 
man should mow his own fields, than 
ride over other people's. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 



May i6th, 
A man's hand may be full of in- 
visible gold, and the wave of it, or 
the grasp, shall do more than an- 
other's with a shower of bullion. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 129 

This invisible gold, also, does not 
necessarily diminish in spending. 

— U?tto this Last. 



May lyth. 
You cannot think that the buck- 
ling on of the knight's armor by his 
lady's hand was a mere caprice of ro- 
mantic fashion. It is the type of an 
eternal truth — that the soul's armor 
is never well set to the heart unless 
a woman's hand has braced it ; and 
it is only when she braces it loosely 
that the honor of manhood fails. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



May i8th. 
Of the various schools of painting, 
examples are accessible to every one. 



130 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and reference to the works them- 
selves is found sufficient for all pur- 
poses of criticism ; but there is noth- 
ing like St. Mark's or the Ducal 
Palace to be referred to in the Na- 
tional Gallery, and no faithful illus- 
tration of them is possible on the 
scale of such a volume as this. And 
it is exceedingly difficult on any scale. 
Nothing is so rare in art, as far as 
my own experience goes, as a fair il- 
lustration of architecture ; perfect il- 
lustration of it does not exist. For 
all good architecture depends upon 
the adaptation of its chiselling to the 
effect at a certain distance from the 
eye ; and to render the peculiar con- 
fusion in the midst of order, and un- 
certainty in the midst of decision, and 
mystery in the midst of trenchant 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 131 

lines, which are the result of distance, 
together with perfect expression of 
the peculiarities of the design, re- 
quires the skill of the most admirable 
irtist, devoted to the work with the 
most severe conscientiousness, nei- 
ther the skill nor the determination 
having as yet been given to the sub- 
ject. 

— Stones of Venice. 



May igth. 
The hope of attaining a higher re- 
ligious position, which induces us to 
encounter, for its exalted alternative, 
the risk of unhealthy error, is often, 
as I said, founded more on pride 
than piety ; and those who, in mod- 
est usefulness, have accepted what 



132 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

seemed to them here the lowHest 
place in the kingdom of their Father, 
are not, I believe, the least likely to 
receive hereafter the command, then 
unmistakable, "Friend, go up higher." 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



May 20th. 
I think I am justified in con- 
sidering those forms to be most nat- 
ural which are most frequent ; or, 
rather, that on the shapes which in 
the every-day world are familiar to 
the eyes of men, God has stamped 
those characters of beauty which He 
has made it man's nature to love ; 
while in certain exceptional forms He 
has shown that the adoption of the 
others was not a matter of necessity. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 133 

but part of the adjusted harmony of 
creation. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

May 2 1 St, 
The great purpose of Music, 
which is to say a thing you mean 
deeply, in the strongest and clearest 
possible way. 

— Fors Clavigera. 

May 22d. 
The fact is, we are all, and always, 
asleep through our lives ; and it is 
only by pinching ourselves very hard 
that we ever come to see, or under- 
stand, anything. At least it is not 
always we who pinch ourselves ; some- 
times other people pinch us ; which 
I suppose is very good of them, — or 



134 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Other things, which I suppose is very 
proper of them. But it is a sad life, 
made up chiefly of naps and pinches. 

— Ethics of the Dust, 



May 2jd, 
So then while Nature is at all times 
pleasant to us, and while the sight and 
sense of her work may mingle happily 
with all our thoughts, and labors, and 
times of existence, that image of her 
which the architect carries away rep- 
resents what we can only perceive in 
her by direct intellectual exertion, and 
demands from us, wherever it appears, 
an intellectual exertion of a similar 
kind in order to understand it and 
feel it. It is the written or sealed im- 
pression of a thing sought out ; it is 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 135 

the shaped result of inquiry and bod- 
ily expression of thought. 

— TAe Seven Lamps of Architecture, 



May 24th. 

A fool always wants to shorten 
space and time ; a wise man wants to 
lengthen both. A fool wants to kill 
space and time ; a wise man, first to 
gain them, then to animate them. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 



May 2^th, 
The man's power is active, pro- 
gressive, defensive. He is eminently 
the doer, the creator, the discoverer, 
the defender. His intellect is for spec- 
ulation and invention ; his energy for 



136 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

adventure, for war, and for conquest, 
wherever war is just, wherever con- 
quest necessary. But the woman's 
power is for rule, not for battle, — and 
her intellect is not for invention or 
creation, but for sweet ordering, ar- 
rangement, and decision. She sees 
the qualities of things, their claims 
and their places. Her great function 
is Praise : she enters into no contest, 
but infallibly judges the crown of con- 
test. By her office and place, she is 
protected from all danger and temp- 
tation. 

— Sesame and Lilies, 



May 26th, 
Since the essence of wealth consists 
in its authority over men, if the ap- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 137 

parent or nominal wealth fail in this 
power, it fails in essence ; in fact, 
ceases to be wealth at all. 

— C/nto this Last. 



May 2yth, 
Through the heavy door whose 
bronze network closes the place of 
his rest, let us enter the church itself 
It is lost in still deeper twilight, to 
which the eye must be accustomed 
for some moments before the form of 
the building can be traced ; and then 
there opens before us a vast cave, 
hewn out into the form of a Cross, 
and divided into shadowy aisles by 
many pillars. Round the domes of 
its roof the light enters only through 
narrow apertures like large stars ; 



138 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and here and there a ray or two from 
some far away casement wanders into 
the darkness, and casts a narrow 
phosphoric stream upon the waves of 
marble that heave and fall in a thou- 
sand colors along the floor. 

— Stones of Venice. 

May 28th. 
God has lent us the earth for our 
life ; it is a great entail. It belongs 
as much to those who are to come 
after us, and whose names are already 
written in the book of creation, as to 
us ; and we have no right, by any- 
thing that we do or neglect, to in- 
volve them in unnecessary penalties, 
or deprive them of benefits which it 
was in our power to bequeath. '^ 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 139 

May 2gth. 
The moment a man can really 
do his work, he becomes speechless 
about it. All words become idle to 
him — all theories. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



May joth. 
People are perpetually squabbling 
about what will be best to do, or easiest 
to do, or advisablest to do, or prof- 
itablest to do ; but they never, so far 
as I hear them talk, ever ask what it 
IS just to do. And it is the law of 
heaven that you shall not be able to 
judge what is wise or easy, unless you 
are first resolved to judge what is 
just. 

— TAe Crown of Wild Olive. 



140 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

May 3 /J/. 
It is popularly supposed that it 
benefits a nation to invent a want. 
But the fact is, that the true benefit 
is in extinguishing a want — in living 
with as few wants as possible. 

— Time and Tide. 



JUNE 



June 1st, 
We know no higher or more ener- 
getic life than our own ; but there 
seems to me this great good in the 
idea of gradation of life, — it admits 
the idea of a life above us, in other 
creatures, as much nobler than ours, 
as ours is nobler than that of the dust. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

June 2d. 
Now let us consider for an instant 
what would be the effect of contin- 
ually repeating an expression of a 
beautiful thought to any other of the 
senses at times when the mind could 
not address that sense to the under- 
standing of it. Suppose that in time 



144 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of serious occupation, of stern busi- 
ness, a companion should repeat in 
our ears continually some favorite 
passage of poetry, over and over again 
all day long. We should not only 
soon be utterly sick and weary of the 
sound of it, but that sound would at 
the end of the day have so sunk into 
the habit of the ear that the entire 
meaning of the passage would be 
dead to us, and it would ever thence- 
forward require some effort to fix 
and recover it. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



June 3d, 
He who loves not God, nor his 
brother, cannot love the grass be- 
neath his feet, nor the creatures 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 145 

which live not for his uses, filling 
those spaces in the universe which he 
needs not : while, on the other hand, 
none can love God, nor his human 
brother, without loving all things 
which his Father loves ; nor without 
looking upon them every one as in 
that respect his brethren also, and 
perhaps worthier than he, if, in the 
under concords they have to fill, 
their part is touched more truly. 

— Frondes Agrestes, 



June 4th, 
Stupidity is always the basis of the 
Judas bargain. We do great injus- 
tice to Iscariot, in thinking him 
wicked above all common wicked- 
ness. He was only a common 



146 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

money-lover, and, like all money- 
lovers, did not understand Christ ; — 
could not make out the worth of 
Him, or meaning of Him. He 
never thought He would be killed. 
He was horror struck when he found 
that Christ would be killed ; threw 
his money away instantly, and 
hanged himself. How many of our 
present money-seekers, think you, 
would have the grace to hang them- 
selves, whoever was killed ? 

— The Crcnvn of Wild Olive, 

June Sth. 
Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, 
to serious question, which I leave 
to the reader's pondering, whether, 
among national manufactures, that of 
Souls of a good quality may not at 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 147 

last turn out a quite leadingly lucra- 
tive one ? 

— Unto this Last. 

June 6th. 
I believe that from the beginning 
of the world there has never been a 
true or fine school of art in which 
color was despised. It has often 
been imperfectly attained and inju- 
dicially applied, but I believe it to 
be one of the essential signs of life in 
a school of art, that it loves color ; 
and I know it to be one of the first 
signs of death in the Renaissance 
schools, that they despised color. 

— Stones of Venice. 

June yth. 
Make either your belief or your 
difficulty definite ; but do not go on, 



148 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

all through your life, believing noth- 
ing intelligently, and yet supposing 
that your having read the words of 
a divine book must give you the 
right to despise every religion but 
your own. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

June 8th, 
Wherever you can rest, there deco- 
rate ; where rest is forbidden, so is 
beauty. You must not mix orna- 
ment with business, any more than 
you may mix play. Work first, and 
then rest. Work first, and then gaze, 
but do not use golden ploughshares, 
nor bind ledgers in enamel. Do not 
thrash with sculptured flails : nor put 
bas-reliefs on millstones. What ! it 
will be asked, are we in the habit of 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 149 

doing so? Even so ; always and 
everywhere. The most familiar posi- 
tion of Greek mouldings is in these 
days on shop fronts. There is not a 
tradesman's sign nor shelf nor coun- 
ter in all the streets of all our cities, 
which has not upon it ornaments 
which were invented to adorn tem- 
ples and beautify kings' palaces. 

— TAe Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

June gth. 
We usually speak as if death pur- 
sued us, and we fled from him ; but 
that is only so in rare instances. 
Ordinarily he masks himself — makes 
himself beautiful — all glorious ; not 
like the King's daughter, all glorious 
within, but outwardly : his clothing 
of wrought gold. We pursue him 



I.IO BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

frantically all our days, he flying or 
hiding from us. Our crowning suc- 
cess at three-score and ten is utterly 
and perfectly to seize, and hold him 
in his eternal integrity — robes, ashes, 
and sting. 

— Unto this Last. 

June loth. 
If you are singing, and sing false 
notes, it does not matter how true 
the words are. If you sing at all, 
you must sing sweetly, if you color 
at all, you must color rightly. 

— Elements of Drawing. 

June nth. 
I assure you, strange as it may 
seem, our scorn of Greek tradition 
depends, not on our belief, but our 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 151 

disbelief, of our own traditions. We 
have, as yet, no sufficient clew to the 
meaning of either ; but you will al- 
ways find that, in proportion to the 
earnestness of our own faith, its ten- 
dency to accept a spiritual personality 
increases ; and that the most vital and 
beautiful Christian temper rests joy- 
fully in its conviction of the multi- 
tudinous ministry of living angels, 
infinitely varied in rank and power. 

— Ethics of the Dust, 



June I2th. 
Another of the strange and evil 
tendencies of the present day is to 
the decoration of the railroad station. 
Now, if there be any place in the 
world in which people are deprived 



152 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of that portion of temper and dis- 
cretion which is necessary to the con- 
templation of beauty, it is there. It 
is the very temple of discomfort, and 
the only charity that the builder can 
extend to us is to show us, plainly as 
may be, how soonest to escape from 
it. The whole system of railroad 
travelling is addressed to people who, 
being in a hurry, are therefore, for 
the time being, miserable. No one 
would travel in that manner who 
could help it — who had time to go 
leisurely over hills and between 
hedges, instead of through tunnels 
and between banks : at least those 
who would, have no sense of beauty 
so acute as that we need consult it at 
the station. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 153 

June IJth. 
The love of the human race is in- 
creased by their individual differences, 
and the unity of the creature, made 
perfect by each having something to 
bestow and to receive, bound to the 
rest by a thousand various necessi- 
ties and various gratitudes ; humility 
in each rejoicing to admire in his fel- 
low that which he finds not in him- 
self, and each being in some respect 
the complement of his race. 

— Frotides Agrestes. 

June 14th. 
Do not think you can make a girl 
lovely, if you do not make her happy. 
There is not one restraint you put 
on a good girl's nature — there is not 
one check you give to her instincts 



154 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of affection or effort — which will not 
be indelibly written on her features, 
with a hardness which is all the more 
painful because it takes away the 
brightness from the eyes of inno- 
cence, and the charm from the brow 
of virtue. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

June i^th. 
Both the truth and the lie agree in 
hiding themselves at first, but the lie 
continues to hide itself with effort, as 
we approach to examine it ; and leads 
us, if undiscovered, into deeper lies ; 
the truth reveals itself in proportion 
to our patience and knowledge, dis- 
covers itself kindly to our pleading, 
and leads us, as it is discovered, into 
deeper truths, 

— Stones of Venice. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 155 

June i6th. 
We owe to the Greeks every noble 
discipline in literature, every radical 
principle of art, and every form of 
convenient beauty in our household 
furniture and daily occupations of 
life. We are unable ourselves to 
make rational use of half that we 
have received from them ; and, of 
our own, we have nothing but dis- 
coveries in science, and fine mechani- 
cal adaptations of the discovered 
physical powers. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

June lyth. 

The railroad is in all its relations a 

matter of earnest business, to be got 

through as soon as possible. It 

transmutes a man from a traveller 



156 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

into a living parcel. For the time 
he has parted with the nobler charac- 
teristics of his humanity for the sake 
of a planetary power of locomotion. 
Do not ask him to admire anything. 
You might as well ask the wind. 
Carry him safely, dismiss him soon : 
he will thank you for nothing else. 
All attempts to please him in any 
other way are mere mockery, and 
insults to the things by which you 
endeavor to do so, 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

June i8th. 
The lawful basis of wealth is, that 
a man who works should be paid the 
fair value of his work ; and that if he 
does not choose to spend it to-day, 
he should have free leave to keep it. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 157 

and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an 
industrious man working daily, and 
laying by daily, attains at last the 
possession of an accumulated sum of 
wealth, to which he has absolute 
right. The idle person who will not 
work, and the wasteful person who 
lays nothing by, at the end of the 
same time will be doubly poor — poor 
in possession, and dissolute in moral 
habit ; and he will then naturally 
covet the money which the other has 
saved. And if he is then allowed to 
attack the other, and rob him of his 
well-earned wealth, there is no more 
any motive for saving, or any reward 
for good conduct ; and all society is 
thereupon dissolved, or exists only 
in systems of rapine. Therefore the 
first necessity of social life is the 



158 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

clearness of national conscience in en- 
forcing the law — that he should keep 
who has JUSTLY earned. 

— T/te Crown of Wild Olive. 



June igth. 
The best part of every great work 
is always inexplicable : it is good be- 
cause it is good. 

— Eletnents of Drawing. 



June 20th, 
The more readily we admit the 
possibiHty of our own cherished con- 
victions being mixed with error, the 
more vital and helpful whatever is 
right in them will become ; and no 
error is so conclusively fatal as the 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 159 

idea that God will not allow us to err, 
though He has allowed all other men 
to do so. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



June 2 1st. 
The man who has eye and intellect 
will invent beautiful proportions, and 
cannot help it ; but he can no more 
tell us how to do it than Wordsworth 
could tell us how to write a sonnet, 
or that Scott could have told us how 
to plan a romance. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



June 2 2d. 
Among the children of God, there 
is always that fearful and bowed ap- 



160 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

prehension of His majesty, and that 
sacred dread of all offence to Him 
which is called the Fear of God ; yet 
of real and essential fear there is not 
any, but clinging of confidence to 
Him as their Rock, Fortress, and De- 
liverer; and perfect love, and casting 
out of fear ; so that it is not possible 
that, while the mind is rightly bent 
on Him, there should be dread of 
anything earthly or supernatural ; and 
the more dreadful seems the height 
of His majesty, the less fear they feel 
that dwell in the shadow of it. " Of 
whom shall I be afraid ? " 

— Frondes Agresies. 

June 2jd. 
The perfect loveliness of a woman's 
countenance can only consist in that 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 161 

majestic peace, which is founded in 
the memory of happy and useful 
years, — full of sweet records ; and 
from the joining of this with that yet 
more majestic childishness, which is 
still full of change and promise ; — 
opening always — modest at once, and 
bright, with hope of better things to 
be won, and to be bestowed. There 
is no old age where there is still that 
promise— it is eternal youth. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

June 24th, 
The mistake of the best men 
through generation after generation, 
has been that great one of thinking 
to help the poor by almsgiving, and 
by preaching of patience or of hope, 
and by every other means, emollient 



162 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

or consolatory, except the one thing 
which God orders for them, justice. 

— Unto this Last. 



June 2^th. 
There are perhaps no great or 
noble truths, from those of religion 
downwards, which present no mis- 
takable aspect to casual or ignorant 
contemplation. 

— Stones of Venice. 

June 26th, 
But if, indeed, there be a nobler 
life in us than in the strangely mov- 
ing atoms ; if, indeed, there is an 
eternal difference between the fire 
which inhabits them, and that which 
animates us, — it must be shown, by 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 163 

each of us in his appointed place, not 
merely in the patience, but in the 
activity of our hope ; not merely by 
our desire, but our labor, for the 
time when the dust of the generations 
of men shall be confirmed for founda- 
tions of the gates of the city of God. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

June 2yth. 
Things in other respects alike, as 
in their substance, or uses, or out- 
ward forms, are noble or ignoble in 
proportion to the fullness of the life 
which either they themselves enjoy, 
or of whose action they bear the evi- 
dence, as sea sands are made beauti- 
ful by their bearing the seal of the 
motion of the waters. 

— The Seve?i Lamps of Architecture, 



164 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

June 28th. 
Now, roughly, not with vain sub- 
tlety of definition, but for plain use 
of the words, "play" is an exertion 
of body or mind, made to please our- 
selves, and with no determined end ; 
and work is a thing done because it 
ought to be done, and with a deter- 
mined end. You play, as you call 
it, at cricket, for instance. That is 
as hard work as anything else ; but it 
amuses you, and it has no result but 
the amusement. If it were done as 
an ordered form of exercise, for 
health's sake, it would become work 
directly. So, in like manner, what- 
ever we do to please ourselves, and 
only for the sake of the pleasure, not 
for an ultimate object, is "play," the 
" pleasing thing," not the useful 



FROM JOHN RUSKIX 165 

thing. Play may be useful in a 
secondary sense (nothing is indeed 
more useful or necessary) ; but the 
use of it depends on its being spon- 
taneous. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive, 

June 2gth. 
After learning to reason, you will 
learn to sing ; for you will want to. 
There is so much reason for singing 
in this sweet world, w^hen one thinks 
rightly of it. 

— The Strait Gate. 

June joth. 

The human clay, now trampled and 

despised, will not be, cannot be, knit 

into strength and light by accident or 

ordinances of unassisted fate. By hu- 



166 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

man cruelty and iniquity it has been 
afflicted ; by human mercy and justice 
it must be raised ; and, in all fear or 
questioning of what is or is not the 
real message of creation or of revela- 
tion, you may assuredly find perfect 
peace, if you are resolved to do that 
which your Lord has plainly required, 
— and content that He should indeed 
require no more of you, than to do 
Justice, to love Mercy, and to walk 
humbly with Him. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 



JULY 



July 1st. 
Among the countless analogies by 
which the nature and relations of the 
human soul are illustrated in the ma- 
terial creation, none are more striking 
than the impressions inseparably con- 
nected with the active and dormant 
states of matter. I have elsewhere 
endeavored to show, that no incon- 
siderable part of the essential char- 
acters of Beauty depended on the ex- 
pression of vital energy in organic 
things, or on the subjection to such 
energy, of things naturally passive and 
powerless. 

— Th^ Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



170 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July 2d. 
He who has once stood beside the 
grave, to look back upon the com- 
panionship which has been forever 
closed, feeling how impotent, there, 
are the wild love, and the keen sor- 
row, to give one instant's pleasure to 
the pulseless heart, or atone in the 
lowest measure to the departed spirit, 
for the hour of unkindness, will 
scarcely for the future incur that debt 
to the heart, which can only be dis- 
charged to the dust. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 



July 3d. 
There is a wide difference between 
elementary knowledge and superficial 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 171 

knowledge — between a firm begin- 
ning, and a feeble smattering. A 
woman may always help her husband 
by what she knows, however little ; 
by what she half-knows, or mis- 
knows, she will only tease him. 

— Sesame attd Lilies. 



July ^M. 
Where the land falls, the water 
flows. The course neither of clouds 
nor rivers can be forbidden by human 
will. But the disposition and admin- 
istration of them can be altered by 
human forethought. Whether the 
stream shall be a curse or a blessing, 
depends upon man's labor, and ad- 
ministrating intelligence. 

— Unto this Last. 



172 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July 5th, 
But be it remembered, that in all 
things, ignorance is liable to be de- 
ceived, and has no right to accuse any- 
thing but itself as the source of the 
deception. The style and the words 
are dishonest, not which are liable to 
be misunderstood if subjected to no 
inquiry, but which are deliberately 
calculated to lead inquiry astray. 

— Stones of Venice. 

July 6th. 
But when we begin to be concerned 
with the energies of man, we find our- 
selves instantly dealing with a double 
creature. Most part of his being 
seems to have a fictitious counterpart, 
which it is at his peril if he do not 
cast off and deny. Thus he has a 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 173 

true and false (otherwise called a liv- 
ing and dead, or a feigned or un- 
feigned) faith. He has a true and a 
false hope, a true and a false charity, 
and, finally, a true and a false lie. 

— T/ie Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

July 7th. 
For there is just this difference be- 
tween the making of a girl's character 
and a boy's — you may chisel a boy 
into shape, as you would a rock, or 
hammer him into it, if he be of a bet- 
ter kind, as you would a piece of 
bronze. But you cannot hammer a 
girl into anything. She grows as a 
flower does, — she will wither without 
sun ; she will decay in her sheath, as 
the narcissus does, if you do not give 
her air enough ; she may fall, and de- 



174 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

file her head in dust, if you leave her 
without help at some moments of her 
life ; but you cannot fetter her ; she 
must take her own fair form and way, 
if she take any, and in mind as in 
body, must have always. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

July 8th. 
Absolute justice is indeed no more 
attainable than absolute truth ; but 
the righteous man is distinguished 
from the unrighteous by his desire 
and hope of justice, as the true man 
from the false by his desire and hope 
of truth. 

— Unto this Last. 

July gth. 
The end of art is as serious as that 
of other beautiful things — of the blue 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 175 

sky, and the green grass, and the 
clouds, and the dew. They are either 
useless, or they are of much deeper 
function than giving amusement. 

— Cestus of Aglaia. 

July loth. 
What we carelessly call False 
hope, or False charity, is only mis- 
taken hope and mistaken charity. 
The real question is only — are we 
dead or alive ? — for, if dead at heart 
and having only a name to live in all 
our actions, we are sowing seeds of 
death. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

July nth. 
The desire of rest planted in the 
heart is no sensual, no unworthy 



176 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

one ; but a longing for renovation, 
and for escape from a state whose 
every phase is mere preparation for 
another equally transitory, to one in 
which permanence shall have become 
possible through perfection. Hence 
the great call of Christ to men, that 
call on which St. Augustine fixed as 
the essential expression of Christian 
hope, is accompanied by the promise 
of rest ; and the death bequest of 
Christ to men, is peace. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 



July I2th. 
There are few bargains in which 
the buyer can ascertain with any- 
thing like precision that the seller 
would have taken no less; or the 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 177 

seller acquire more than a comfort- 
able faith that the purchaser would 
have given no more. This impossi- 
bility of precise knowledge prevents 
neither from striving to attain the 
desired point of greatest vexation 
and injury to the other, nor from 
accepting it for a scientific principle 
that he is to buy for the least and 
sell for the most possible, though 
what the real least or most may be 
he cannot tell. In like manner, a 
just person lays it down for a scien- 
tific principle that he is to pay a just 
price, and, without being able pre- 
cisely to ascertain the limits of such 
a price, will nevertheless strive to 
attain the closest possible approxima- 
tion to them. 

— Unto this Last. 



178 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July 13th, 
There will be always a number of 
men who would fain set themselves 
to the accumulation of wealth as the 
sole object of their lives. Neces- 
sarily, that class of men is an unedu- 
cated class, inferior in intellect, and 
more or less cowardly. It is physi- 
cally impossible for a well-educated, 
intellectual, or brave man to make 
money the chief object of his 
thoughts ; just as it is for him to 
make his dinner the principal object 
of them. All healthy people like 
their dinners, but their dinner is not 
the main object of their lives. So 
all healthily-minded people like mak- 
ing money — ought to like it, and to 
enjoy the sensation of winning it ; 
but the main object of their life is 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 179 

not money ; it is something better 
than money. 

— T/ie Crown of Wild Olive. 



July 14th. 
It often happens that the beauty 
of the veining in some varieties of 
alabaster is so great, that it becomes 
desirable to exhibit it by dividing 
the stone, not merely to economize 
its substance, but to display the 
changes in the disposition of its fan- 
tastic lines. By reversing one of two 
thin plates successively taken from 
the stone, and placing their corre- 
sponding edges in contact, a per- 
fectly symmetrical figure may be 
obtained, which will enable the eye 
to comprehend more thoroughly the 



180 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

position of the veins. And this is 
actually the method in which, for the 
most part, the alabasters of St. Mark 
are employed ; thus accomplishing a 
double good, — directing the specta- 
tor, in the first place, to close obser- 
vation of the nature of the stone em- 
ployed, and in the second, giving 
him a farther proof of the honesty of 
intention in the builder : for wherever 
similar veining is discovered in two 
pieces, the fact is declared that they 
have been cut from the same stone. 

— Stones of Venice. 



July 15th, 
The life of a nation is usually, 
like the flow of a lava stream, first 
bright and fierce, then languid and 



FROM JOHM RUSKIN 181 

covered, at last advancing only by 
the tumbling over and over of its 
frozen blocks. And that last condi- 
tion is a sad one to look upon. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

July i6th. 
Generally, we are under an impres- 
sion that a man's duties are public, 
and a woman's private. But this is 
not altogether so. A man has a per- 
sonal work or duty, relating to his 
own home, and a public work or 
duty, which is the expansion of the 
other, relating to the state. So a 
woman has a personal work or duty, 
relating to her own home, and a 
public work and duty, which is also 
the expansion of that. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



( 



182 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July lyth. 
It is quite possible to lead a vir- 
tuous and happy life without books 
or ink, but not without wishing to 
sing when we are happy, nor with- 
out meeting with continual occasions 
when our song, if right, would be a 
kind service to others. 

— Rock Honeycomb. 



July i8th. 
For it is on its value as a piece of 
perfect and unchangeable coloring, 
that the claims of this edifice to our 
respect are finally rested ; and a deaf 
man might as well pretend to pro- 
nounce judgment on the merits of a 
full orchestra, as an architect trained 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 183 

in the composition of form only, to 
discern the beauty of St. Mark's. 

— stones of Venice. 



July igth. 
We have certain work to do for 
our bread, and that is to be done 
strenuously ; other work to do for 
our delight, and that is to be done 
heartily : neither is to be done by 
halves and shifts, but with a will ; 
and what is not worth this effort is 
not to be done at all. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

July 20th. 
And least of all whatever may have 
been the eagerness of our passions, 
or the height of our pride, are we 



184 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

able to understand in its depth the 
third and most solemn character in 
which our life is like those clouds of 
heaven ; that to it belongs not only 
their transience, not only their mys- 
tery, but also their power ; that in 
the cloud of the human soul there is 
a fire stronger than the lightning, and 
a grace more precious than the rain. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

July 2 1st, 
A brave belief in life is indeed an 
enviable state of mind, but, as far as 
I can discern, an unusual one. I 
know few Christians so convinced of 
the splendor of the rooms in their 
Father's house, a^ to be happier when 
their friends are called to those man- 
sions, than they would have been if 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 185 

the Queen had sent for them to live 
at court : nor has the Church's most 
ardent " desire to depart, and be with 
Christ," ever cured it of the singular 
habit of putting on mourning for 
every person summoned to such de- 
parture. On the contrary, a brave 
belief in death has been assuredly 
held by many not ignoble persons, 
and it is a sign of the last depravity 
in the Church itself, when it assumes 
that such a belief is inconsistent with 
either purity of character, or energy 
of hand. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

July 22d. 
Joy and love are not arts, nor are 
they limited to humanity. But the 
love song becomes art when, by rea- 



186 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

son and discipline, the singer has be- 
come conscious of the ravishment in 
its divisions to the lute. 

— Laws of Fesole, 

July 23d, 
It will be asked, How is imitation 
to be rendered healthy and vital ? 
Unhappily, while it is easy to enu- 
merate the signs of life, it is impossi- 
ble to define or to communicate life ; 
and while every intelligent writer on 
Art has insisted on the difference be- 
tween the copying found in an ad- 
vancing or recedent period, none 
have been able to communicate, in 
the slightest degree, the force of vi- 
tality to the copyist over whom they 
might have influence. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 187 

July 24th, 
And our definition of Wealth, ex- 
panded, becomes : " The possession 
3f useful articles, which we can use.'' 
This is a very serious change. For 
kvealth, instead of depending merely 
3n a " have," is thus seen to depend 
3n a " can." And what we reasoned 
3f only as accumulation of material is 
seen to demand also accumulation of 
capacity. 

— Unto this Last. 

July 2Sth, 
Did you ever hear, not of a Maud, 
but a Madeline, who went down to 
her garden in the dawn, and found 
One waiting at the gate, whom she 
supposed to be the gardener ? Have 
you not sought Him often ; — sought 



188 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Him in vain, all through the night ; — 
sought Him in vain at the gate of 
that old garden where the fiery sword 
is set? He is never there; but at 
the gate of this garden He is waiting 
always — waiting to take your hand — 
ready to go down to see the fruits of 
the valley, to see whether the vine 
has flourished, and the pomegranate 
budded. There you shall see with 
Him the little tendrils of the vines 
that His hand is guiding — there you 
shall see the pomegranate springing 
where His hand cast the sanguine 
seed ; — more : you shall see the 
troops of the angel keepers that, with 
their wings, wave away the hungry 
birds from the pathsides where he 
has sown, and call to each other be- 
tween the vineyard rows, " Take us 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 189 

■he foxes, the little foxes, that spoil 
'he vines, for our vines have tender 
grapes." 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



July 26th. 
None of us, or very few of us, do 
either hard or soft work because we 
think we ought ; but because we have 
chanced to fall into the way of it, and 
cannot help ourselves. Now, nobody 
does anything well that they cannot 
help doing : work is only done well 
when it is done with a will ; and no 
man has a thoroughly sound will un- 
less he knows he is doing what he 
should, and is in his place. 

— The Crmvn of Wild Olive. 



190 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July 27th. 
Perhaps the great monotone gray 
of Nature and of Time is a better 
color than any that the human hand 
can give ; but that is nothing to our 
present business. The simple fact is, 
that the builders of those cathedrals 
laid upon them the brightest colors 
they could obtain, and that there is 
not, as far as I am aware, in Europe, 
any monument of a truly noble school 
which has not been either painted all 
over, or vigorously touched with 
paint, mosaic, and gilding in its 
prominent parts. Thus far Egyp- 
tians, Greeks, Goths, Arabs, and 
mediaeval Christians all agree : none 
of them, when in their right senses, 
ever think of doing without paint; 
and, therefore, when I said above that 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 191 

the Venetians were the only people 
who had thoroughly sympathized 
with the Arabs in this respect, I re- 
ferred, first, to their intense love of 
color, which led them to lavish the 
most expensive decorations on ordi- 
nary dwelling-houses ; and, secondly, 
to that perfection of the color-instinct 
in them, which enabled them to ren- 
der whatever they did, in this kind, 
as just in 'principle as it was gorgeous 
in appliance. 

— Stones of Venice^ 

July 28th, 
It seems to me, on the whole, that 
the feehngs of the purest and most 
mightily passioned human souls are 
likely to be the truest. Not, in- 
deed, if they do not desire to know 



192 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the truth, or blind themselves to it 
that they may please themselves with 
passion, — for then they are no longer 
pure ; but if, continually seeking and 
accepting the truth as far as it is dis- 
cernible, they trust their Maker for 
the integrity of the instincts He has 
gifted them with, and rest in the 
sense of a higher truth which they 
cannot demonstrate, I think they will 
be most in the right, so. 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

July 2gth. 
We are foolish, and without ex- 
cuse foolish, in speaking of the 
"superiority" of one sex to the 
other, as if they could be compared 
in similar things. Each has what 
the other has not : each completes 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 193 

the other, and is completed by the 
other : they are in nothing ahke, and 
the happiness and perfection of both 
depend on each asking and receiving 
from the other what the other only 
can give. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



July 30th, 
A well-disposed group of notes in 
Music will sometimes make you 
weep and sometimes laugh. You 
can express the depth of all affec- 
tions by these dispositions of sound ; 
you can give courage to the soldier, 
language to the lover, consolation to 
the mourner, more joy to the joyful, 
more humility to the devout. 

— Two Paths. 



194 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

July 31st, 
Like other beautiful things in this 
world, its end is to be beautiful ; and, 
in proportion to its beauty, it receives 
permission to be otherwise useless. 
We do not blame emeralds and ru- 
bies because we cannot make them 
into heads of hammers. 

— Stones of Venice. 



AUGUST 



i 



August 1st. 
And, exactly as a good and earnest 
student of drawing will not lose time 
in ruling lines or finishing back- 
grounds about studies which, while 
they have answered his immediate 
purpose, he knows to be imperfect 
and inferior to what he will do here- 
after, — so the vigor of a true school 
of early architecture, which is either 
working under the influence of high 
example or which is itself in a state 
of rapid development, is very curi- 
ously traceable, among other signs, 
in the contempt of exact symmetry 
and measurement, which in dead ar- 
chitecture are most painful necessities. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



198 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

August 2d, 
And here is the test, with every 
man, of whether money is the prin- 
cipal object with him, or not. If in 
mid-life he could pause and say, 
" Now I have enough to live upon, 
I'll live upon it ; and having well 
earned it, I will also well spend it, 
and go out of the world poor, as I 
came into it," then money is not 
principal with him ; but if, having 
enough to live upon in the manner 
befitting his character and rank, he 
still wants to make more, and to die 
rich, then money is the principal ob- 
ject with him, and it becomes a curse 
to himself, and generally to those 
who spend it after him. For you 
know it must be spent some day ; the 
only question is whether the man who 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 199 

makes it shall spend it, or some one 
else, and generally it is better for the 
maker to spend it, for he will know 
best its value and use. And if a man 
does not choose thus to spend his 
money, he must either hoard it or 
lend it, and the worst thing he can 
generally do is to lend it ; for bor- 
rowers are nearly always ill-spenders, 
and it is with lent money that all evil 
is mainly done, and all unjust war 
protracted. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



August jd. 
Music is the nearest at hand, the 
most orderly, the most delicate, and 
the most perfect of all bodily pleas- 



200 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

ures, it is also the only one which is 
equally helpful to all the ages of man, 
— helpful from the nurse's song to her 
infant, to the music unheard of oth- 
ers, which so often haunts the death- 
bed of pure and innocent spirits. 

— Time and Tide. 



August 4th. 
Perhaps all that we have to do is 
meant for nothing more than an ex- 
ercise of the heart and of the will, 
and is useless in itself; but, at all 
events, the little use it has may well 
be spared if it is not worth putting 
our hands and our strength to. It 
does not become our immortality to 
take an ease inconsistent with its au- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 201 

thority, nor to suffer any instruments 
to which it can dispense, to come be- 
tween it and the things it rules : and 
he who would form the creations of 
his own mind by any other instru- 
ment than his own hand, would also, 
if he might, give grinding organs to 
Heaven's angels, to make their music 
easier. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 



August ^th. 
Three-fourths of the demands ex- 
isting in the world are romantic ; 
founded on visions, idealisms, hopes, 
and affections ; and the regulation of 
the purse is, in its essence, regulation 
of the imagination and the heart. 

— Unto this Last. 



202 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

August 6th. 

'' What is your life ? It is even 
as a vapor that appeareth for a little 
time, and then vanisheth away." 

I suppose few people reach the 
middle or latter period of their age, 
without having, at some moment of 
change or disappointment, felt the 
truth of those bitter words ; and been 
startled by the fading of the sun- 
shine from the cloud of their life, 
into the sudden agony of the knowl- 
edge that the fabric of it was as 
fragile as a dream, and the endurance 
of it as transient as the dew. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

August Jth. 
If your life were but a fever fit, — 
the madness of a night, whose follies 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 203 

were all to be forgotten in the dawn, 
it might matter little how you fretted 
away the sickly hours, — what toys 
you snatched at, or let fall, — what 
visions you followed wistfully with 
the deceived eyes of sleepless frenzy. 
Is the earth only an hospital ? are 
health and heaven to come ? Then 
play, if you care to play, on the floor 
of the hospital dens. Knit its straws 
into what crowns please you ; gather 
the dust of it for treasure, and die rich 
in that, though clutching at the black 
motes in the air with your dying 
hands ; — and yet, it may be well with 
you. But if this Hfe be no dream, 
and the world no hospital, but your 
Palace-inheritance ; — if all the peace 
and power and joy you can ever win, 
must be won now, and all fruit of vie- 



204 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

tory gathered here, or never ; — will 
you still, throughout the puny totality 
of your life, weary yourselves in the 
fire for vanity ? 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

August 8th. 
And if the stranger would yet learn 
in what spirit it was that the dominion 
of Venice was begun, and in what 
strength she went forth conquering 
and to conquer, let him not seek to 
estimate the wealth of her arsenals or 
number of her armies, nor look upon 
the pageantry of her Palaces, nor en- 
ter into the secrets of her councils; 
but let him ascend the highest tier of 
the stern ledges that sweep round 
the altar of Torcello, and then, look- 
ing as the pilot did of old along the 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 205 

marble ribs of the goodly temple-ship, 
let him repeople its veined deck with 
the shadows of its dead mariners, and 
strive to feel in himself the strength 
of heart that was kindled within them. 

— Stofies of Venice. 

August gth. 
Compare a river that has burst its 
banks with one that is bound by 
them, and the clouds that are scat- 
tered over the face of the whole 
heaven with those that are marshalled 
into ranks and orders by its winds. 
So that though restraint, utter and 
unrelaxing, can never be comely, this 
is not because it is in itself an evil, 
but only because, when too great, it 
overpowers the nature of the thing 
restrained, and so counteracts the 



206 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

other laws of which that nature is 
itself composed. 

— TAe Seven Lam/>s of Architecture. 



August loth. 
Will you not, then, make as sure 
of the Life that now is, as you are of 
the Death that is to come? Your 
hearts are wholly in this world — 
will you not give them to it wisely, 
as well as perfectly? And see, first 
of all, that you have hearts, and 
sound hearts, too, to give. Because 
you have no heaven to look for, is 
that any reason that you should re- 
main ignorant of this wonderful and 
infinite earth, which is firmly and 
instantly given you in possession? 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 207 

August nth. 
All good architecture is the expres- 
sion of national life and character ; 
and it is produced by a prevalent 
and eager national taste, or desire for 
beauty. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

August I2th. 
The " wealth of this world " con- 
sists broadly in its healthy food-giv- 
ing land, its convenient building land, 
its useful animals, its useful minerals, 
its books, and works of art. 

— Fors Clavigera. 

August ijth. 
It is true that symmetry is gener- 
ally sought for in works of smaller 
jewelery ; but, even there, not a per- 



21^ BE.iCTIFCL THOUGHTS 

feet symmetry, and obniined under 
circumstances quite ditferent from 
those which :it^'ect the placing ot 
sh:iits m architecture. First : the 
symmetry is usually imperfect. The 
stones that seem to match each other 
in a ring or necklace, appear to do 
so only because thev are so small 
that their ditFerences ;u-e not easily 
mcisured bv the eye; but there is 
almost alwavs such difference between 
them .IS \v\>v.ld be strikir.i:'\ ...^•.m- ^ ::: 
if it existed in the same propoicion 
between two shafts nine or ten feet 
in height. Secondly : the quantity 
ot stones which pass through a jew- 
eler's hands, and the facility of ex- 
change of such small objects, enable 
the tradesman to select any number 
ot szon^s of approximate size ; a se- 



FROM JOHX Rl'SKIX 209 

lection, however, often requiring so 
much time, that perfect symmetry in 
a group of very line stones adds 
enormously to their value. But the 
architect has neither the time nor the 
facilities of exchange. 

— Stones of Venice. 

August 14th, 
The feebleness of childhood is full 
of promise and of interest, — the 
struggle of imperfect knowledge full 
of energy and continuity, — but to 
see impotence and rigidity settling 
upon the form of the developed man ; 
to see the types which once had the 
die of thought struck fresh upon them, 
worn flat by over use ; to see the 
shell of the living creature in its adult 
form, when its colors are faded, and 



210 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

its inhabitant perished, — this is a 
sight more humiliating, more melan- 
choly, than the vanishing of all knowl- 
edge, and the return to confessed 
and helpless infancy. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

August i^th. 
There is rough work to be done, 
and rough men must do it ; there is 
gentle work to be done, and gentle- 
men must do it ; and it is physically 
impossible that one class should do, 
or divide, the work of the other. 
And it is of no use to try to conceal 
this sorrowful fact by fine words, 
and to talk to the workman about the 
honorableness of manual labor, and 
the dignity of humanity. Rough 
work, honorable or not, takes the life 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 211 

out of us; and the man who has 
been heaving clay out of a ditch 
all day, or driving an express train 
against the north wind all night, or 
holding a collier's helm in a gale on 
a lee shore, or whirling white-hot iron 
at a furnace mouth, is not the same 
man at the end of his day, or night, 
as one who has been sitting in a quiet 
room, with everything comfortable 
about him, reading books, or classing 
butterflies, or painting pictures. 

— T/ie Crown of Wild Olive, 



August 1 6th. 
You cannot paint or sing your- 
selves into being good men. You 
must be good men before you can 
either paint or sing, and then the 



212 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

color and the sound will complete 
in you all that is best. 

— Lectures on Art. 



August lyth. 
There is dreaming enough, and 
earthliness enough, and sensuality 
enough in human existence, without 
our turning the few glowing moments 
of it into mechanism; and since our 
life must at the best be but a vapor 
that appears for a little time and then 
vanishes away, let it at least appear 
as a cloud in the height of Heaven, 
not as the thick darkness that broods 
over the blast of the Furnace, and 
rolHng of the Wheel. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 213 

August i8th. 

Labor is the contest of the life 
of man with an opposite ; — the term 
"life" including his intellect, soul, 
and physical power, contending with 
question, difficulty, trial, or material 
force. 

Labor is of a higher or lower order, 
as it includes more or fewer of the 
elements of life; and labor of good 
quality, in any kind, includes always 
as much intellect and feeling as will 
fully and harmoniously regulate the 
physical force. 

— Unto this Last. 



August igth. 
To those among us, however, who 
have lived long enough to form some 



214 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

just estimate of the rate of the changes 
which are, hour by hour in accelerat- 
ing catastrophe, manifesting them- 
selves in the laws, the arts, and the 
creeds of men, it seems to me, that 
now at least, if never at any former 
time, the thoughts of the true nature 
of our life, and of its powers and 
responsibilities, should present them- 
selves with absolute sadness and stern- 
ness. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

August 20th. 
The shortness of life is not, to any 
rational person, a conclusive reason 
for wasting the space of it which may 
be granted him ; nor does the antici- 
pation of death to-morrow suggest, to 
any one but a drunkard, the expedi- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 215 

ency of drunkenness to-day. To 
teach that there is no device in the 
grave, may indeed make the device- 
less person more contented in his dul- 
ness ; but it will make the deviser 
only more earnest in devising ; nor is 
human conduct likely, in every case, 
to be purer, under the conviction that 
all its evil may in a moment be par- 
doned, and all its wrong-doing in a 
moment redeemed ; and that the sigh 
of repentance, which purges the guilt 
of the past, will waft the soul into a 
felicity which forgets its pain, — than 
it may be under the sterner, and to 
many not unwise minds, more prob- 
able, apprehension, that " what a man 
soweth that shall he also reap " — or 
others reap, — when he, the living 
seed of pestilence, walketh no 



216 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

more in darkness, but lies down 
therein. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

August 2 1 St, 
The perception of color is a gift 
just as definitely granted to one per- 
son, and denied to another, as an ear 
for music ; and the very first requisite 
for true judgment of St. Mark's, is 
the perfection of that color-faculty 
which few people ever set themselves 
seriously to find out whether they 
possess or not. 

— Stones of Venice. 
August 2 2d, 

You know there is a tendency in 
the minds of many men, when they 
are heavily disappointed in the main 
purposes of their life, to feel, and per- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 217 

haps in warning, perhaps in mockery, 
to declare, that life itself is a vanity. 
Because it has disappointed them, 
they think its nature is of disappoint- 
ment always, or at best, of pleasure 
that can be grasped by imagination 
only ; that the cloud of it has no 
strength nor fire within ; but is a 
painted cloud only, to be delighted 
in, yet despised. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

August 2jd, 

Of all wastes, the greatest waste 
that you can commit is the waste of 
labor. If you went down in the 
morning into your dairy, and found 
that your youngest child had got 
down before you, and that he and 
the cat were at play together, and 



218 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

that he had poured out all the cream 
on the floor for the cat to lap up, you 
would scold the child, and be sorry 
the cream was wasted. But if, in- 
stead of wooden bowls with milk in 
them, there are golden bowls with 
human life in them, and instead of 
the cat to play with — the devil to 
play with ; and you yourself the 
player ; and instead of leaving that 
golden bowl to be broken by God at 
the fountain, you break it in the dust 
yourself, and pour the human life out 
on the ground for the fiend to lick up 
— that is no waste ! 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

August 24th. 
There is no music in a " rest '' that 
I know of, but there*s the making of 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 219 

music in it, and people are always 
missing that part of the life melody, 
and scrambling on without counting 
— not that it's easy to count ; but 
nothing on which so much depends 
ever is easy — yet " All one's life is 
a Music, if one touches the notes 
rightly and in tune." 

— Ethics of the Dust. 

August 2^th. 
Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear 
green streams wind along their well- 
known beds ; and under the dark 
quietness of the undisturbed pines, 
there spring up, year by year, such 
company of joyful flowers as I know 
not the like of among all the bless- 
ings of the earth. It was spring time, 
too ; and all were coming forth in 



220 BEAUTIFUL THOtJGHTS 

clusters crowded for very love ; there 
was room enough for all, but they 
crushed their leaves into all manner 
of strange shapes only to be nearer to 
each other. There was the wood 
anemone, star after star, closing every 
now and then into nebulae ; and there 
was the oxalis, troop by troop, like 
virginal processions of the Mois de 
Marie, the dark vertical clefts in the 
limestone choked up with them as 
with heavy snow, and touched with 
ivy on the edges — ivy as light and 
lovely as the vine ; and, ever and 
anon, a blue gush of violets, and cow- 
sHp bells in sunny places ; and in the 
more open ground, the vetch, and 
comfrey, and mezereon, and the small 
sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, 
and the wild strawberry, just a bios- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 221 

som or two, all showered amidst the 
golden softness of deep, warm, amber- 
colored moss. 

— TAg Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

August 26th. 
But the effect of failure upon my 
own mind has been just the reverse 
of this. The more that my life dis- 
appointed me, the more solemn and 
wonderful it became to me. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

August 2'Jth, 
We shall never know what you 
have done or left undone, until the 
question with us every morning, is 
not how to do the gainful thing, but 
how to do the just thing during the 
day ; nor until we are at least so far 
on the way to being Christian, as to 



222 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

acknowledge that maxim of the poor 
half-way Mahometan, " One hour in 
the execution of justice is worth 
seventy years of prayer." 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



August 28th. 
There is no Wealth but Life. 
Life, including all its powers of love, 
of joy, and of admiration. That 
country is the richest which nourishes 
the greatest number of noble and 
happy human beings ; that man is 
richest who, having perfected the 
functions of his own life to the ut- 
most, has also the widest helpful 
influence, both personal, and by means 
of his possessions, over the lives of' 
others. 

— Unto this Last. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 223 

August 2gth. 
Nor is this interior without effect 
on the minds of the people. At every 
hour of the day there are groups col- 
lected before the various shrines, and 
solitary worshippers scattered through 
the dark places of the church, evi- 
dently in prayer both deep and reve- 
rent, and, for the most part, pro- 
foundly sorrowful. The devotees at 
the greater number of the renowned 
shrines of Romanism may be seen 
murmuring their appointed prayers 
with wandering eyes and unengaged 
gestures ; but the step of the stranger 
does not disturb those who kneel on 
the pavement of St. Mark's ; and 
hardly a moment passes, from early 
morning to sunset, in which we may 
not see some half-veiled figure enter 



224 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

beneath the Arabian porch, cast itself 
into long abasement on the floor of 
the temple, and then rising slowly 
with more confirmed step, and with a 
passionate kiss and clasp of the arms 
given to the feet of the crucifix, by 
which the lamps burn always in the 
northern aisle, leave the church, as if 
comforted. 

— Stones of Venice. 

August JOth. 
How cold is all history, how life- 
less all imagery, compared to that 
which the living nation writes, and 
the uncorrupted marble bears ! — how 
many pages of doubtful record might 
we not often spare, for a few stones 
left one upon another ! The ambition 
of the old Babel builders was well 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 225 

directed for this world : there are but 
two strong conquerors of the forget- 
fulness of men. Poetry and Architec- 
ture ; and the latter in some sort in- 
cludes the former, and is mightier in 
its reality : it is well to have, not only 
what men have thought and felt, but 
what their hands have handled, and 
their strength wrought, and their eyes 
beheld, all the days of their life. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

August J 1st. 
This intense apathy in all of us is 
the first great mystery of life ; it 
stands in the way of every perception, 
every virtue. There is no making 
ourselves feel enough astonishment 
at it. That the occupations or pas- 
times of life should have no motive. 



226 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

is understandable ; but — That life it- 
self should have no motive — that we 
neither care to find out what it may- 
lead to, nor to guard against its being 
forever taken away from us — here is 
a mystery indeed. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



SEPTEMBER 



September ist. 
If all the money in the world, notes 
and gold, were destroyed in an in- 
stant, it would leave the world neither 
richer nor poorer than it was. But it 
would leave the individual inhabitants 
of it in different relations. 

— Munera Pulveris. 

September 2d. 

The idea of self-denial for the sake 
of posterity, of practising present 
economy for the sake of debtors yet 
unborn, of planting forests that our 
descendants may live under their 
shade, or of raising cities for future 
nations to inhabit, never, I suppose, 
efficiently takes place among publicly 



230 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

recognized motives of exertion. Yet 
these are not the less our duties ; nor 
is our part fitly sustained upon the 
earth, unless the range of our intended 
and deliberate usefulness include, not 
only the companions but the succes- 
sors of our pilgrimage. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

September jd. 
The maximum of life can only be 
reached by the maximum of virtue. 
In this respect the law of human pop- 
ulation differs wholly from that ani- 
mal life. The multiplication of ani- 
mals is checked only by want of food, 
and by the hostility of races ; the pop- 
ulation of the gnat is restrained by 
the hunger of the swallow, and that 
of the swallow by the scarcity of gnats. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 231 

Man, considered as an animal, is 
indeed limited by the same laws : hun- 
ger, or plague, or war, are the neces- 
sary and only restraints upon his in- 
crease, — effectual restraints hitherto, 
— his principal study having been 
how most swiftly to destroy himself, 
or ravage his dwelling-places, and his 
highest skill directed to give range 
to the famine, seed to the plague, 
and sway to the sword. But, con- 
sidered as other than an animal, his 
increase is not limited by these laws. 
It is limited only by the limits of 
his courage and his love. Both of 
these have their bounds, and ought 
to have ; his race has its bounds also ; 
but these have not yet been reached, 
nor will be reached for ages. 

— Unto this Last. 



232 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September 4th. 
No true painter ever speaks, or 
ever has spoken, much of his art. 
The greatest speak nothing. Even 
Reynolds is no exception, for he 
wrote of all that he could not himself 
do, and was utterly silent respecting 
all that he himself did. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



September ^th. 
Men cannot benefit those that are 
with them as they can benefit those 
who come after them ; and of all the 
pulpits from which human voice is 
ever sent forth, there is none from 
which it reaches so far as from the 
grave. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 233 

September 6th. 
No scene is continually and untir- 
ingly loved, but one rich by joyful 
human labor ; smooth in field ; fair 
in garden ; full in orchard ; trim, 
sweet, and frequent in homestead ; 
ringing with voices of vivid exist- 
ence. No air is sweet that is silent ; 
it is only sweet when full of low 
currents of undersound — triplets of 
birds, and murmur and chirp of in- 
sects, and deep-toned words of men, 
and wayward trebles of childhood. 

— Unto this Last. 



September yth. 
Does a bird need to theorize about 
buildiilg its nest, or boast of it when 
built ? All good work is essentially 



234 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

done that way — without hesitation, 
without difficulty, without boasting ; 
and in the doers of the best, there is 
an inner and involuntary power which 
approximates literally to the instinct 
of an animal — nay, I am certain that 
in the most perfect human artists, rea- 
son does not supersede instinct, but 
is added to an instinct as much more 
divine than that of the lower animals 
as the human body is more beautiful 
than theirs ; that a great singer sings 
not with less instinct than the night- 
ingale, but with more — only more va- 
rious, applicable, and governable ; that 
a great architect does not build with 
less instinct than the beaver or the 
bee, but with more — with an innate 
cunning of proportion that embraces 
all beauty, and a divine ingenuity 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 235 

of skill that improvises all con- 
struction. 

— Sesame and Lilies, 

September 8th, 
Do justice to your brother (you 
can do that, whether you love him 
or not), and you will come to love 
him. But do injustice to him, be- 
cause you don't love him ; and you 
will come to hate him. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

September gth, 
" Every tree that bringeth not forth 
good fruit shall be hewn down, and 
cast into the fire." Yes, verily : to 
be baptized with fire, or to be cast 
therein ; it is the choice set before 
all men. The march-notes still mur- 



236 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

mur through the grated window, and 
mingle with the sounding in our ears 
of the sentence of judgment, which 
the old Greek has written on that 
Baptistery wall. Venice has made 
her choice. 

— Stones of Venice. 

September loth. 
Every human action gains in honor, 
in grace, in all true magnificence, by 
its regard to things that are to come. 
It is the far sight, the quiet and con- 
fident patience, that, above all other 
attributes, separate man from man, 
and near him to his Maker ; and 
there is no action nor art, whose 
majesty we may not measure by this 
test. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 237 

September nth. 
Art is neither to be achieved by 
effort of thinking, nor explained by 
accuracy of speaking. It is the in- 
stinctive and necessary result of pow- 
ers which can only be developed 
through the mind of successive gen- 
erations, and which finally burst into 
life under social conditions as slow of 
growth as the faculties they regulate. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

September I2th. 
So then, you have the child's char- 
acter in these four things — Humil- 
ity, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. 
That's what you have got to be con- 
verted to. " Except ye be converted 
and become as little children." — You 
hear much of conversion nowadays ; 



238 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

but people always seem to think they 
have got to be made wretched by con- 
version, — to be converted to long 
faces. No, friends, you have got to 
be converted to short ones ; you have 
to repent into childhood, to repent 
into delight, and delightsomeness. 

— The Crcnvn of Wild Olive. 



September 13th, 
Have you ever thought seriously 
of the meaning of that blessing given 
to the peacemakers ? People are al- 
ways expecting to get peace in heaven ; 
but you know whatever peace they get 
there will be ready made. 

— The Eagle's Nest. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 239 

September i^th. 
Obedience is, indeed, founded on 
a kind of freedom, else it would 
become mere subjugation, but that 
freedom is only granted that obedi- 
ence may be more perfect ; and thus, 
while a measure of license is necessary 
to exhibit the individual energies of 
things, the fairness and pleasantness 
and perfection of them all consist in 
their Restraint. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

September i^th. 

As the art of life is learned, it will 
be found at last that all lovely things 
are also necessary, — the wild flower 
by the wayside, as well as the tended 
corn ; and the wild birds and creatures 
of the forest, as well as the tended 



240 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

cattle ; because man doth not live by 
bread only, but also by the desert 
manna, by every wondrous word and 
unknowable work of God. 

— Unio this Last. 

September i6th. 
Ask the laborer in the field, at the 
forge, or in the mine ; ask the patient, 
delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong- 
armed, fiery-hearted worker in bronze, 
and in marble, and with the colors 
of light ; and none of these, who are 
true workmen, will ever tell you that 
they have found the law of heaven an 
unkind one — that in the sweat of 
their face they should eat bread, till 
they return to the ground ; nor that 
they ever found it an unrewarded 
obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 241 

faithfully to the command — "What- 
soever thy hand findeth to do — do 
it with thy might." 

— Sesame and Lilies, 



September I'jth, 
Give a little love to a child, and 
you get a great deal back. It loves 
everything near it, when it is a right 
kind of child ; would hurt nothing, 
would give the best it has away, 
always, if you need it ; does not lay 
plans for getting everything in the 
house for itself, and delights in help- 
ing people ; you cannot please it so 
much as by giving it a chance of 
being useful, in ever so humble a 
way. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



242 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September i8th. 
But, with all the efForts that the 
best men make, much of their being 
passes in a kind of dream, in which 
they indeed move, and play their 
parts sufficiently, to the eyes of their 
fellow dreamers, but have no clear 
consciousness of what is around them, 
or within them ; blind to the one, 
insensible to the other. I would not 
press the definition into its darker 
application to the dull heart and heavy 
ear; I have to do with it only as it 
refers to the too frequent condition 
of natural existence, whether of nations 
or individuals, settling commonly upon 
them in proportion to their age. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 243 

September igth, 
A truly valuable or available thing 
is that which leads to life with its 
whole strength. In proportion as it 
does not lead to life, or as its strength 
is broken, it is less valuable; in pro- 
portion as it leads away from life, it 
is unvaluable or malignant. 

— Unto this Last, 

September 20th, 
Have you ever considered what a 
deep under meaning there lies, or at 
least, may be read, if we choose, in 
our custom of strewing flowers before 
those whom we think most happy? 
Do you suppose it is merely to de- 
ceive them into the hope that happi- 
ness is always to fall thus in showers 
at their feet ? — that wherever they 



244 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

pass they will tread on herbs of sweet 
scent, and that the rough ground will 
be made smooth for them by depth 
of roses ? So surely as they believe 
that, they will have, instead, to walk 
on bitter herbs and thorns ; and the 
only softness to their feet will be of 
snow. But it is not thus intended 
they should believe; there is a better 
meaning in that old custom. The 
path of a good woman is indeed 
strewn with flowers ; but they rise 
behind her steps, not before them. 
" Her feet have touched the mead- 
ows, and left the daisies rosy." 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

September 2ist. 
I have not time, however, to- 
night to show you in how many ways 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 245 

the power of capital is unjust ; but 
remember this one great principle — 
you will find it unfailing — that when- 
ever money is the principal object of 
life with either man or nation, it is 
both got ill, and spent ill ; and does 
harm both in the getting and spend- 
ing ; but when it is not the principal 
object, it and all other things will be 
well got and well spent. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



September 2 2d, 
The noblest word in the catalogue 
of social virtue is " Loyalty," and the 
sweetest which men have learned in 
the pastures of the wilderness is 
" Fold." 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 



246 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

September 2jd. 
What is chiefly needed in England 
at the present day is to show the 
quantity of pleasure that may be ob- 
tained by a consistent, well-adminis- 
tered competence, modest, confessed, 
and laborious. We need examples of 
people who, leaving Heaven to de- 
cide whether they are to rise in the 
world, decide for themselves that they 
will be happy in it, and have resolved 
to seek — not greater wealth, but sim- 
pler pleasure ; not higher fortune, but 
deeper felicity ; making the first of 
possessions, self-possession ; and hon- 
oring themselves in the harmless pride 
and calm pursuits of peace. 

— Unto this Last. 



FROM JOHX RUSKIX 247 

September 2^th. 
Although your days are numbered, 
and the following darkness sure, is 
it necessary that you should share 
the degradation of the brute, because 
you are condemned to its mortality ; 
or live the Hfe of the moth, and of the 
worm, because you are to companion 
them in the dust ? Not so ; we may 
have but a few thousands of days to 
spend, perhaps hundreds only — per- 
haps, tens ; nay, the longest of our 
time and best, looked back on, will 
be but as a moment, as the twinkling 
of an eye ; still, we are men, not in- 
sects ; we are living spirits, not pass- 
ing clouds. "He maketh the winds 
His messengers ; the momentary fire. 
His minister;" and shall we do less 
than these 1 Let us do the work of 



248 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

men while we bear the form of them ; 
and, as we snatch our narrow portion 
of time out of Eternity, snatch also 
our narrow inheritance of passion 
out of Immortality — even though our 
lives be as a vapor, that appeareth for 
a little time, and then vanisheth away. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



September 2^th. 
Taste is not only a part and an in- 
dex of morality — it is the only mo- 
rality. The first, and last, and closest 
trial question to any living creature 
is, "What do you like?" Tell me 
what you like, and I'll tell you what 
you are. Go out into the street, and 
ask the first man or woman you meet, 
what their " taste " is, and if they an- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 249 

swer candidly, you know them, body 
and soul. 

— T/u Crown of Wild Olive. 

September 26th. 
I have observed that in almost all 
cathedrals, when the pulpits are pecu- 
liarly magnificent, sermons are not 
often preached from them ; but rather, 
and especially if for any important 
purpose, from some temporary erec- 
tion in other parts of the building : 
and though this may often be done 
because the architect has consulted 
the effect upon the eye more than 
the convenience of the ear in the 
placing of his larger pulpit, I think 
it also proceeds in some measure from 
a natural dislike in the preacher to 
match himself with the magnificence 



250 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of the rostrum, lest the sermon should 
not be thought worthy of the place. 

— Stones of Venice. 

September 2yth. 
There seems to me to be a won- 
derful misunderstanding among the 
majority of architects of the present 
day as to the very nature and mean- 
ing of Originality, and of all wherein 
it consists. Originality in expression 
does not depend on invention of new 
words ; nor originality in poetry on 
invention of new measures ; nor, in 
painting, on invention of new colors, 
or new modes of using them. The 
chords of music, the harmonies of 
color, the general principles of the 
arrangement of sculptural masses, 
have been determined long ago, and, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 251 

in all probability, cannot be added to 
any more than they can be altered. 
Granting that they may be, such addi- 
tions or alterations are much more 
the work of time and of multitudes 
than of individual inventors. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

September 28th. 
Think you that judgment waits 
till the doors of the grave are opened ? 
It waits at the doors of your houses — 
it waits at the corners of your streets ; 
we are in the midst of judgment — 
the insects that we crush are our 
judges — the moments we fret away 
are our judges — the elements that 
feed us, judge, as they minister — 
and the pleasures that deceive us, 
judge, as they indulge. Let us, for 



252 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

our lives, do the work of Men while 
we bear the Form of them, if indeed 
those lives are Not as a vapor, and do 
Not vanish away. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

September 2()th. 
The first duty of government is to 
see that the people have food, fuel, 
and clothes. The second, that they 
have means of moral and intellectual 
education. 

— Fors Clavigera. 

September joth. 
And though it is the nobility of the 
highest creatures to look forward to, 
and partly to understand the changes 
which are appointed for them, prepar- 
ing for them beforehand ; and if, as 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 253 

is usual with appointed changes, they 
be into a higher state, even desiring 
them, and rejoicing in the hope of 
them, yet it is the strength of every 
creature, be it changeful or not, to 
rest, for the time being, contented 
with the conditions of its existence, 
and striving only to bring about the 
changes which it desires, by fulfilling 
to the uttermost the duties for which 
its present state is appointed and con- 
tinued. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



OCTOBER 



October 1st, 
Care in no wise to make more of 
money, but care to make much of it ; 
remembering always the great, pal- 
pable, inevitable fact — the rule and 
root of all economy — that what one 
person has another cannot have ; and 
that every atom of substance, of what- 
ever kind, used or consumed, is so 
much human life spent ; which, if it 
issue in the saving present life, or 
gaining more, is well spent, but if not 
is either so much life prevented or so 
much slain. 

— Unto this Last, 



258 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October 2d, 

And, whatever our station in life 
may be, at this crisis, those of us who 
mean to fulfil our duty ought, first, 
to live on as little as we can ; and, 
secondly, to do all the wholesome 
work for it we can, and to spend all 
we can spare in doing all the sure 
good we can. 

And sure good is first in feeding 
people, then in dressing people, then 
in lodging people, and lastly in rightly 
pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, 
or any other subject of thought. 

— Sesame and Lilies, 



October jd. 
And all delight in fine art, and all 
love of it, resolve themselves into 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 259 

simple love of that which deserves 
love. That deserving is the quality 
which we call " loveliness " — (we 
ought to have an opposite word, 
hateliness, to be said of the things 
which deserve to be hated) ; and it 
is not an indifferent nor optional 
thing whether we love this or that ; 
but it is just the vital function of all 
our being. What we like determines 
what we are^ and is the sign of what 
we are ; and to teach taste is inevita- 
bly to form character. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

October 4th, 
When the sermon is good we need 
not much concern ourselves about the 
form of the pulpit. But sermons can- 
not always be good ; and I believe 



260 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

that the temper in which the congre- 
gation set themselves to listen may be 
in some degree modified by their per- 
ception of fitness or unfitness, im- 
pressiveness or vulgarity, in the dis- 
position of the place appointed for 
the speaker, — not to the same de- 
gree, but somewhat in the same way, 
that they may be influenced by his 
own gestures or expression, irrespec- 
tive of the sense of what he says. 

— Stones of Venice. 

October ^th. 
We think too much in our benevo- 
lent eflforts, more multiplied and more 
vain day by day, of bettering men by 
giving them advice and instruction. 
There are few who will take either : 
the chief thing they need is occupa- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 261 

tion. I do not mean work in the 
sense of bread, — I mean work in the 
sense of mental interest ; for those 
who either are placed above the ne- 
cessity of labor for their bread, or 
who will not work although they 
should. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

October 6th, 
The entire object of true educa- 
tion is to make people not merely do 
the right things, but enjoy the right 
things — not merely industrious, but 
to love industry — not merely learned, 
but to love knowledge — not merely 
pure, but to love purity — not merely 
just, but to hunger and thirst after 
justice. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



262 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October yth. 
Among the losses, all the more fa- 
tal in being unfelt, brought upon us 
by the fury and vulgarity of modern 
life, I count for one of the saddest, 
the loss of the wish to gather a flower 
in travelling. 

— Proserpina. 

October 8th, 

The exaltation, the sin, and the 
punishment of Tyre have been re- 
corded for us, in perhaps the most 
touching words ever uttered by the 
Prophets of Israel against the cities 
of the stranger. But we read them 
as a lovely song ; and close our ears 
to the sternness of their warning : 
for the very depth of the Fall of 
Tyre has blinded us to its reality, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 263 

and we forget, as we watch the 
bleaching of the rocks between the 
sunshine and the sea, that they were 
once " as in Eden, the garden of 
God." 

Her successor, like her in perfec- 
tion of beauty, though less in endur- 
ance of dominion, is still left for our 
beholding in the final period of her 
decline : a ghost upon the sands of 
the sea, so weak — so quiet, — so be- 
reft of all but her loveliness, that we 
might well doubt, as we watched her 
faint reflection in the mirage of the 
lagoon, which was the City, and which 
the Shadow. 

I would endeavor to trace the lines 
of this image before it be for ever lost, 
and to record, as far as I may, the 
warning which seems to me to be ut- 



264 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

tered by every one of the fast-gaining 
waves, that beat, like passing bells, 
against the Stones of Venice. 

— Stones of Venice. 

October gth. 
Ah, masters of modern science, 
give me back my Athena out of your 
vials, and seal, if it may be, once 
more, Asmodeus therein. You have 
divided the elements, and united them ; 
enslaved them upon the earth, and dis- 
cerned them in the stars. Teach us, 
now, but this of them, which is all 
that man may know, — that the Air 
is given to him for his life ; and 
the Rain for his thirst, and for his 
baptism : and the Fire for warmth ; 
and the Sun for sight ; and the Earth 
for his meat — and his Rest. 

— The Queen of the Air. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 265 

October loth. 
Whenever in any religious faith, 
dark or bright, we allow our minds 
to dwell upon the points in which we 
differ from other people, we are wrong, 
and in the devil's power. That is the 
essence of the Pharisee's thanksgiving 
— " Lord, I thank thee that I am not 
as other men are." At every moment 
of our lives we should be trying to find 
out, not in what we differ from other 
people, but in what we agree with 
them ; and the moment we find we 
can agree as to anything that should 
be done, kind or good, (and who but 
fools couldn't ?) then do it ; push at 
it together ; you can't quarrel in a 
side-by-side push ; but the moment 
that even the best men stop pushing, 
and begin talking, they mistake their 



266 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

pugnacity for piety, and it*s all 
over. 

'—Sesame and Lilies. 



October nth. 
It is not enough to find men abso- 
lute subsistence ; we should think of 
the manner of life which our demands 
necessitate ; and endeavor, as far as 
may be, to make all our needs such 
as may, in the supply of them, raise, 
as well as feed, the poor. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



October I2th, 
And if, on due and honest thought 
over these things, it seems that the 
kind of existence to which men are 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 267 

now summoned by every plea of pity 
and claim of right, may, for some time 
at least, not be a luxurious one, con- 
sider whether, even supposing it 
guiltless, luxury would be desired by 
any of us if we saw clearly at our 
sides the suffering which accompanies 
it in the world. 

— C/nto this Last, 

October ijth. 
It is quite true, infallibly true, that 
if any man will not work, neither 
should he eat — think of that, and 
every time you sit down to your din- 
ner, ladies and gentlemen, say sol- 
emnly, before you ask a blessing, 
" How much work have I done to- 
day for my dinner ? " 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



268 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October 14th. 
Good architecture is the work of 
good and believing men ; therefore, 
you say, at least some people say, 
" Good architecture must essentially 
have been the work of the clergy, not 
of the laity." No — a thousand times 
no ; good architecture has always 
been the work of the commonalty, 
not of the clergy. What, you say, 
those glorious cathedrals — the pride 
of Europe — did their builders not 
form Gothic architecture ? No ; they 
corrupted Gothic architecture. Gothic 
was formed in the baron's castle, and 
the burgher's street. It was formed 
by the thoughts, and hands, and pow- 
ers of free citizens and warrior kings. 
By the monk it was used as an instru- 
ment for the aid of his superstition ; 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 269 

when that superstition became a beau- 
tiful madness, and the best hearts of 
Europe vainly dreamed and pined in 
the cloister, and vainly raged and per- 
ished in the crusade — through that 
fury of perverted faith and wasted war, 
the Gothic rose also to its loveliest, 
most fantastic, and, finally, most fool- 
ish dreams ; and, in those dreams, was 
lost. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

October i^th. 
We cannot justly interpret the re- 
ligion of any people, unless we are 
prepared to admit that we ourselves, 
as well as they, are liable to error in 
matters of faith ; and that the con- 
victions of others, however singular, 
may in some points have been well 



270 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

founded, while our own, however rea- 
sonable, may in some particulars be 
mistaken. 

— The Queen of the Air. 



October i6th. 
Some years ago, in conversation 
with an artist whose works, perhaps, 
alone, in the present day, unite per- 
fection of drawing with resplendence 
of color, the writer made some in- 
quiry respecting the general means 
by which this latter quaHty was most 
easily to be attained. The reply was 
as concise as it was comprehensive — 
" Know what you have to do, and do 
it " — comprehensive, not only as re- 
garded the branch of art to which it 
temporarily applied, but as express- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 271 

ing the great principle of success in 
every direction of human effort ; for 
I beHeve that failure is less frequently 
attributable to either insufficiency of 
means or impatience of labor, than 
to a confused understanding of the 
thing actually to be done. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



October ijth. 
Raise the veil boldly ; face the 
light ; and if, as yet, the light of the 
eye can only be through tears and 
the light of the body through sack- 
cloth, go thou forth weeping, bear- 
ing precious seed, until the time come, 
and the kingdom, when Christ's gift 
of bread and bequest of peace shall 
be " Unto this last as unto thee ; ** 



272 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and when, for earth^s severed multi- 
tudes of the wicked and the weary- 
there shall be holier reconciliation 
than that of the narrow home, and 
calm economy where the Wicked 
cease — not from trouble, but from 
troubling — and the Weary are at rest. 

— U?ito this Last. 



October i8th. 
In all my past work, my endeavor 
has been to show that good architec- 
ture is essentially religious — the pro- 
duction of a faithful and virtuous, not 
of an infidel and corrupted people. 
But in the course of doing this, I 
have had also to show that good archi- 
tecture is not ecclesiastical. People 
are so apt to look upon religion as 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 273 

the business of the clergy, not their 
own, that the moment they hear of 
anything dependent on " rehgion," 
they think it must also have de- 
pended on the priesthood ; and I 
have had to take what place was to 
be occupied between these two er- 
rors, and fight both, often with seem- 
ing contradiction. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

October igth. 
Never had city a more glorious 
Bible. Among the nations of the 
North, a rude and shadowy sculp- 
ture filled their temples with confused 
and hardly legible imagery ; but, for 
her, the skill and the treasures of 
the East had gilded every letter, and 
illumined every page, till the Book- 



274 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Temple shone from afar off like the 
star of the Magi. In other cities, 
the meetings of the people were often 
in places withdrawn from religious as- 
sociation, subject to violence and to 
change ; and on the grass of the dan- 
gerous rampart, and in the dust of 
the troubled street, there were deeds 
done and counsels taken, which, if 
we cannot justify, we may sometimes 
forgive. But the sins of Venice, 
whether in her palace or in her pi- 
azza, were done with the Bible at her 
right hand. The walls on which its 
testimony was written were separated 
but by a few inches of marble from 
those which guarded the secrets of 
her councils, or confined the victims 
of her policy. 

— Stones of Venice. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 275 

October 20th, 
Exactly in proportion to the de- 
gree in which we become' narrow in 
the cause and conception of our pas- 
sions, incontinent in the utterance of 
them, feeble of perseverance in them, 
sullied or shameful in the indulgence 
of them, their expression by musical 
sound becomes broken, mean, fatui- 
tous, and at last impossible ; the meas- 
ured waves of the air of heaven will 
not lend themselves to expression of 
ultimate vice, it must be forever sunk 
into discordance or silence. 

— The Queen of the Air, 



October 21st, 
The book I called " The Seven 
Lamps " was to show that certain 



276 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

right states of temper and moral feel- 
ing were the magic powers by which 
all good architecture, without excep- 
tion, had been produced. " The 
Stones of Venice " had, from begin- 
ning to end, no other aim than to 
show that the Gothic architecture of 
Venice had arisen out of, and indi- 
cated in all its features, a state of 
pure national faith, and of domestic 
virtue ; and that its Renaissance ar- 
chitecture had arisen out of, and in 
all its features indicated, a state of 
concealed national infidelity, and of 
domestic corruption. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

October 2 2d, 
Now this window commanded a 
direct view of the range of moun- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 277 

tains, which, as I told you before, 
overhung the Treasure Valley, and 
more especially of the peak from 
which fell the Golden River. It was 
just at the close of the day, and when 
Gluck sat down at the window, he 
saw the rocks of the mountain tops, 
all crimson, and purple with the sun- 
set ; and there were bright tongues 
of fiery cloud burning and quivering 
about them ; and the river, brighter 
than all, fell, in a waving column of 
pure gold, from precipice to precipice, 
with the double arch of a broad 
purple rainbow stretched across it, 
flushing and fading alternately in the 
wreaths of spray. 

— The King of the Golden River. 



278 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

October 2jd, 
Music is thus, in her health, the 
teacher of perfect order, and is the 
voice of the obedience of angels, and 
the companion of the course of the 
spheres of heaven ; and in her deprav- 
ity she is also the teacher of perfect 
disorder and disobedience, and the 
Gloria in Excelsis becomes the Mar- 
seillaise. 

— The Queen of the Air. 

October 24th. 
There is no law, no principle, based 
on past practice, which may not be 
overthrown in a moment, by the aris- 
ing of a new condition, or the inven- 
tion of a new material ; and the most 
rational, if not the only, mode of 
averting the danger of an utter disso- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 279 

lution of all that is systematic and 
consistent in our practice, or of an- 
cient authority in our judgment, is to 
cease, for a little while, our endeavors 
to deal with the multiplying host of 
particular abuses, restraints, or require- 
ments ; and endeavor to determine, as 
the guides of every effort, some con- 
stant, general, and irrefragable laws of 
right — laws which, based upon man's 
nature, not upon his knowledge, may 
possess so far the unchangeableness of 
the one, as that neither the increase 
nor imperfection of the other may be 
able to assault or invalidate them. 

— T/te Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

October 2t^th. 
The first lecture says or tries to say, 
that, life being very short, and the 



280 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

quiet hours of it few, we ought to 
waste none of them in reading value- 
less books ; and that valuable books 
should, in a civilized country, be within 
the reach of every one, printed in 
excellent form, for a just price ; but 
not in any vile, vulgar or by reason 
of smallness of type physically injuri- 
ous form, at a vile price. For we 
none of us need many books, and 
those which we need ought to be 

o 

clearly printed, on the best paper, and 
strongly bound. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

October 26th, 

The wonder has always been great 

to me that heroism has never been 

supposed to be in any wise consistent 

with the practice of supplying people 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 281 

with food, or clothes ; but rather with 
that of quartering one's self upon 
them for food, and stripping them of 
their clothes. Spoiling of armor is 
an heroic deed in all ages; but the 
selling of clothes, old or new, has 
never taken any color of magnanim- 
ity. Yet one does not see why 
feeding the hungry and clothing the 
naked should ever become base busi- 
ness, even when engaged in on a large 
scale. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

October 2'/th, 
The impotent feeling of romance, 
so singularly characteristic of this cen- 
tury, may indeed gild, but never save 
the remains of those mightier ages to 
which they are attached like climbing 



282 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

flowers ; and they must be torn away 
from the magnificent fragments, if we 
would see them as they stood in their 
own strength. Those feelings, always 
as fruitless as they are f3nd, are in 
Venice not only incapable of protect- 
ing, but even of discerning, the ob- 
jects of which they ought to have been 
attached. The Venice of modern 
fiction and drama is a thing of yester- 
day, a mere effloresence of decay, a 
stage dream which the first ray of day- 
light must dissipate into dust. 

— Stones of Venice. 

October 28th. 
All great song, from the first day 
when human lips contrived syllables, 
has been sincere song. With deliber- 
ate didactic purpose the tragedians — 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 283 

with pure and native passion the 
lyrists — fitted their perfect words to 
their dearest faiths. 

— The Queeti of the Air. 

October 2gth, 
If there is any one point which, in 
six thousand years of thinking about 
right and wrong, wise and good men 
have agreed upon, or successively by 
experience discovered, it is that God 
dislikes idle and cruel people more 
than any others ; — that His first order 
is, "Work while you have light;" 
and His second, " Be merciful while 
you have mercy." 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

October ^oth. 
Getting on — but where to ? Gath- 
ering together — but how much .^ Do 



284 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

you mean to gather always — never to 
spend? If so, I wish you joy of your 
goddess, for I am just as well off as 
you, without the trouble of worship- 
ping her at all. But if you do not 
spend, somebody else will — somebody 
else must. 

— The Crown of JVild Olive. 

October jist. 
Never teach a child anything of 
which you are not yourself sure ; and, 
above all, if you feel anxious to force 
anything into its mind in tender 
years, that the virtue of youth and 
early association may fasten it there, 
be sure it is no lie which you thus 
sanctify. 

— Time and Tide. 



NOVEMBER 



November ist. 
The purest forms of our own re- 
ligion have always consisted in sacri- 
ficing less things to win greater, time 
to win eternity, the world to win the 
skies. The order, " sell that thou 
hast,'* is not given without the prom- 
ise, " thou shalt have treasure in 
heaven ; " and well for the modern 
Christian if he accepts the alternative 
as his Master left it, and does not 
practically read the command and 
promise thus : " Sell that thou hast 
in the best market, and thou shalt 
have treasure in eternity also." 

— The Queen of the Air, 



288 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 2d. 
However mean or inconsiderable 
the act, there is something in the well 
doing of it, which has fellowship with 
the noblest forms of manly virtue ; 
and the truth, decision, and temper- 
ance, which we reverently regard as 
honorable conditions of the spiritual 
being, have a representative or deriva- 
tive influence over the works of the 
hand, the movements of the frame, 
and the action of the intellect. 

— The Seven Lamp of Architecture. 



November jd, 
" Work while you have light," es- 
pecially while you have the light of 
morning. There are few things more 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 289 

wonderful to me than that old people 
never tell young ones how precious 
their youth is. They sometimes sen- 
timentally regret their own earlier 
days ; sometimes prudently forget 
them ; often foolishly rebuke the 
young, often more foolishly indulge, 
often most foolishly thwart and re- 
strain, but scarcely ever warn or watch 
them. Remember, then, that I, at 
least, have warned you^ that the hap- 
piness of your life, and its power, and 
its part and rank in earth or in heav- 
en, depend on the way you pass your 
days now. They are not to be sad 
days ; far from that, the first duty of 
young people is to be delighted and 
delightful ; but they are to be in the 
deepest sense solemn days. 

— Sesame and Lilies, 



290 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 4th. 
I never can make out how it is that 
a knight -^rx2iXit does not expect to be 
paid for his trouble, but a^^^/^r-errant 
always does ; — that people are willing 
to take hard knocks for nothing, but 
never to sell ribands cheap ; — that 
they are ready to go on fervent cru- 
sades to recover the tomb of a buried 
God, but never on any travels to fulfil 
the orders of a living one ; — that they 
will go anywhere barefoot to preach 
their faith, but must be well bribed to 
practise it, and are perfectly ready to 
give the Gospel gratis, but never the 
loaves and fishes. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

November ^th. 
And although the last few eventful 
years, fraught with change to the face 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 291 

of the whole earthy have been more 
fatal in their influence on Venice than 
the ^yt hundred that preceded them ; 
though the noble landscape of ap- 
proach to her can now be seen no 
more, or seen only by a glance, as the 
engine slackens its rushing on the 
iron line ; and though many of her 
palaces are forever defaced, and many 
in desecrated ruins, there is still so 
much of magic in her aspect, that the 
hurried traveller, who must leave her 
before the wonder of that first aspect 
has been worn away, may still be led 
to forget the humility of her origin, 
and to shut his eyes to the depth of 
her desolation. 

— Stones of Venice. 



292 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 6th. 
By care and tenderness, we can ex- 
tend the range of lovely life in plants 
and animals ; by our neglect and cru- 
elty, we can arrest it, and bring pesti- 
lence in its stead. Again, by right 
discipline we can increase our strength 
of noble will and passion or destroy 
both. 

— The Queen of the Air. 

November yth, 
I have given a considerable part of 
my life to the investigation of Vene- 
tian painting, and the result of that 
inquiry was my fixing upon one man 
as the greatest of all Venetians, and, 
therefore, as I believed, of all paint- 
ers whatsoever. I formed this faith 
(whether right or wrong matters at 
present nothing), in the supremacy of 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 293 

the painter Tintoret, under a roof 
covered with his pictures ; and of those 
pictures, three of the noblest were 
then in the form of shreds of ragged 
canvas, mixed up with the laths of 
the roof, rent through by three Aus- 
trian shells. Now it is not every lec- 
turer who could tell you that he had 
seen three of his favorite pictures torn 
to rags by bomb shells. And after 
such a sight, it is not every lecturer 
who would tell you that, nevertheless, 
war was the foundation of all great art. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

November 8th. 
There is always more to be taught 
of absolute, uncontrovertible knowl- 
edge, open to its capacity, than any 
child can learn ; there is no need to 



294 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

teach it anything doubtful. Better 
that it should be ignorant of a thou- 
sand truths, than have consecrated in 
its heart a single lie. 

— Time and Tide. 

November gth. 
The flower is the end or proper 
object of the seed, not the seed of 
the flower. The reasons for seeds is 
that flowers may be ; not the reason 
of flowers that seeds may be. The 
flower itself is the creature which the 
spirit makes ; only, in connection with 
its perfectness is placed the giving 
birth to its successor. 

— The Queen of the Air, 

November loth. 
And as thus every action, down 
even to the drawing of a line or utter- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 295 

ance of a syllable, is capable of a pe- 
culiar dignity in the manner of it, 
which we sometimes express by saying 
it is truly done (as a line or tone is 
true), so also it is capable of dignity 
still higher in the motive of it. For 
there is no action so slight, nor so 
mean, but it may be done to a great 
purpose, and ennobled therefore ; nor 
is any purpose so great but that slight 
actions may help it, and may be so 
done as to help it much, most espe- 
cially that chief of all purposes, the 
pleasing of God. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



November nth. 
Now, therefore, see that no day 
passes in which you do not make 



296 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

yourself a somewhat better creature : 
and in order to do that, find out, first, 
what you are now. Do not think 
vaguely about it ; take pen and paper, 
and write down as accurate a descrip- 
tion of yourself as you can, with the 
date to it. If you dare not do so, 
find out why you dare not, and try to 
get strength of heart enough to look 
yourself fairly in the face, in mind as 
well as body. I do not doubt but 
that the mind is a less pleasant thing 
to look at than the face, and for that 
very reason it needs more looking at ; 
so always have two mirrors on your 
toilet table, and see that with proper 
care you dress body and mind before 
them daily. 

— Sesame and Lilies, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 297 

November I2th. 
You may imagine that your work 
is wholly foreign to, and separate from 
mine. So far from that, all the pure 
and noble arts of peace are founded 
on war ; no great art ever yet rose on 
earth, but among a nation of soldiers. 
There is no art among a shepherd 
people, if it remains at peace. There 
is no art among an agricultural people, 
if it remains at peace. Commerce is 
barely consistent with fine art ; but 
cannot produce it. Manufacture not 
only is unable to produce it, but in- 
variably destroys whatever seeds of it 
exist. There is no great art possible 
to a nation but that which is based on 
battle. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive, 



298 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November ijth. 
Well might it seem that such a 
city had owed her existence rather to 
the rod of the enchanter, than the 
fear of the fugitive ; that the waters 
which encircled her had been chosen 
for the mirror of her state, rather than 
the shelter of her nakedness ; and 
that all which in nature was wild or 
merciless, — Time and Decay, as well 
as the waves and tempests, — had been 
won to adorn her instead of to destroy, 
and might still spare, for ages to come, 
that beauty which seemed to have 
fixed for its throne the sands of the 
hour-glass as well as of the sea. 

— Stones of Venice. 

November 14th. 
We will take the bird first. It is 
little more than a drift of the air 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 299 

brought into form by plumes ; the air 
is in all its quills, it breathes through 
its whole frame and flesh, and glows 
with air in its flying, like blown flame ; 
its rests upon the air, subdues it, sur- 
passes it, outraces it, — is the air, con- 
scious of itself, conquering itself, rul- 
ing itself 

— The Queen of the Air. 

November i^th. 
It is very strange to me to discover 
this ; and very dreadful — but I saw it 
to be quite an undeniable fact. The 
common notion that peace and the 
virtues of civil life flourished together, 
I found to be wholly untenable. 
Peace and the vices of civil life only 
flourish together. We talk of peace 
and learning, and of peace and plenty. 



300 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and of peace and civilization; but I 
found that those were not the words 
which the Muse of History coupled 
together : that on her lips, the words 
were — peace and sensuality, peace and 
selfishness, peace and corruption, peace 
and death. I found, in brief, that all 
great nations learned their truth of 
word, and strength of thought, in war ; 
that they were nourished in war, and 
wasted by peace ; taught by war, and 
deceived by peace ; trained by war, 
and betrayed by peace ; — in a word, 
that they were born in war and expired 
in peace. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

November i6th. 
All false thoughts and seeings come 
mainly of our thinking of what we 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 301 

have no business with, and looking 
for things we want to see, instead of 
things that ought to be seen. 

— Time and Tide. 

November ijth. 
Great art is the expression of the 
mind of a great man, and mean art, 
that of the want of mind of a weak 
man. A foolish person builds fool- 
lishly, and a wise one, sensibly ; a 
virtuous one, beautifully ; and a vi- 
cious one, basely. If stone work is 
well put together, it means that a 
thoughtful man planned it, and a care- 
ful man cut it, and an honest man 
cemented it. If it has too much orna- 
ment, it means that its carver was too 
greedy of pleasure ; if too little, that 
he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, 



302 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and the like. So that when once you 
have learned how to spell these most 
precious of all legends, — pictures and 
buildings, — you may read the char- 
acters of men, and of nations, in their 
art, as in a mirror; nay, as in a micro- 
scope, and magnified a hundredfold ; 
for the character becomes passionate 
in the art, and intensifies itself in all 
its noblest or meanest delights. 

— Queen of the Air. 

November i8th. 
We treat God with irreverence by 
banishing Him from our thoughts, 
not by referring to His will on slight 
occasions. His is not the finite au- 
thority or intelligence which cannot 
be troubled with small things. There 
is nothing so small but what we may 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 303 

honor God by asking His guidance 
of it, or insult Him by taking it in 
our own hands ; and what is true of 
the Deity is equally true of His 
Revelation. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 

November igth. 
Write down then, frankly, what 
you are, or, at least, what you think 
yourself, not dwelling upon those in- 
evitable faults which I have just told 
you are of little consequence, and 
which the action of a right life will 
shake or smooth away ; but that you 
may determine to the best of your 
intelligence what you are good for, 
and can be made into. You will find 
that the mere resolve not to be use- 
less, and the honest desire to help 



304 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

Other people, will, in the quickest and 
delicatest ways, improve yourself. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



November 20th. 
And from the earliest incipient civil- 
ization until now, the population of 
the earth divides itself, when you look 
at it widely, into two races ; one of 
workers, and the other of players — 
one tilling the ground, manufacturing, 
building, and otherwise providing for 
the necessities of life ; — the other part 
proudly idle, and continually there- 
fore needing recreation, in which they 
use the productive and laborious or- 
ders partly as their cattle, and partly 
as their puppets or pieces in the game 
of death. 

— Crown of Wild Olive. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 305 

November 2ist, 
In the olden days of travelling, 
now to return no more, in which dis- 
tance could not be vanquished with- 
out toil, but in which that toil was 
rewarded, partly by the power of 
deliberate survey of the countries 
through which the journey lay, and 
partly by the happiness of the even- 
ing hours, when, from the top of the 
last hill he had surmounted, the trav- 
eller beheld the quiet village where he 
was to rest, scattered among the mead- 
ows beside its valley stream ; or, from 
the long-hoped-for turn in the dusty 
perspective of the causeway, saw, for 
the first time, the towers of some 
famed city, faint in the rays of sun- 
set — hours of peaceful and thought- 
ful pleasure, for which the rush of 



306 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the arrival in the railway station is 
perhaps not always, or to all men, an 
equivalent, — in those days, I say, 
when there was something more to 
be anticipated and remembered in the 
first aspect of each successive halting- 
place, than a new arrangement of glass 
roofing and iron girder, there were few 
moments of which the recollection was 
more fondly cherished by the travel- 
ler than that which, as I endeavored 
to describe in the close of the last 
chapter, brought him within sight of 
Venice, as his gondola shot into the 
open lagoon from the canal of Mestre. 

— Stones of Venice. 

November 2 2d. 
Of all facts concerning art, this is 
the one most necessary to be known, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 307 

that, while manufacture is the work 
of hands only, art is the work of the 
whole spirit of man ; and as that 
spirit is, so is the deed of it ; and by- 
whatever power of vice or virtue any- 
art is produced, the same vice or vir- 
tue it reproduces and teaches. That 
which is born of evil begets evil ; and 
that which is born of valor and honor, 
teaches valor and honor. All art is 
either infection or education. It must 
be one or other of these. 

— The Queeji of the Air. 

November 2jd, 

For it is an asserted truth that, 
whenever the faculties of men are at 
their fulness, they must express them- 
selves by art ; and to say that a state 
is without such expression, is to say 



308 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

that it is sunk from its proper level 
of manly nature. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

November 2/j.th, 
" Time is money '' — so say your 
practised merchants and economists. 
None of them, however, I fancy, as 
they draw towards death, find that 
the reverse is true, and that " money 
is time.'* 

— Time and Tide. 

November 2^th. 
As I myself look at it, there is no 
fault nor folly of my life — and both 
have been many and great — that does 
not rise up against me, and take away 
my joy, and shorten my power of pos- 
session of sight, of understanding. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 309 

And every past effort of my life, 
every gleam of rightness or good in 
it, is with me now, to help me in my 
grasp of this art, and its vision. So 
far as I can rejoice in, or interpret 
either, my power is owing to what of 
right there is in me. I dare to say it, 
that, because through all my life I have 
desired good, and not evil ; because I 
have been kind to many ; have wished 
to be kind to all ; have wilfully in- 
jured none ; and because I have loved 
much, and not selfishly ; therefore, 
the morning light is yet visible to 
me on those hills, and you, who read, 
may trust my thought and word in 
such work as I have to do for you ; 
and you will be glad afterwards that 
you have trusted them. 

— The Queen of the Air. 



310 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

November 26th, 
Architecture is the art which so dis- 
poses and adorns the edifices raised 
by man, for whatsoever uses, that the 
sight of them may contribute to his 
mental health, power, and pleasure. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 



November 2yth, 
Of course we are ignorant and blind 
creatures, and we cannot know what 
seeds of good may be in present suf- 
fering, or present crime ; but with 
what we cannot know, we are not 
concerned. It is conceivable that 
murderers and liars may in some dis- 
tant world be exalted into a higher 
humanity than they could have 
reached without hoi^^*<ide or false- 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 311 

hood ; but the contingency is not one 
by which our actions should be guided. 
There is, indeed, a better hope that 
the beggar, who Hes at our gates in 
misery, may, within gates of pearl, 
be comforted, but the Master, whose 
words are our only authority for think- 
ing so, never Himself inflicted disease 
as a blessing, nor sent away the hun- 
gry unfed, or the wounded unhealed. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



November 28th, 
The broad fact is, that a human 
creature of the highest race, and most 
perfect as a human thing, is invaria- 
bly both kind and true ; and that as 
you lower the race, you get cruelty 
and falsene*'-' r^s you get deformity ; 



312 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

and this so steadily and assuredly, 
that the two great words which, in 
their first use, meant only perfection 
of race, have come, by consequence 
of the invariable connection of virtue 
with the fine human nature, both to 
signify benevolence of disposition. 
The word generous, and the word 
gentle, both, in their origin, meant 
only " of pure race," but because 
charity and tenderness are insepara- 
ble from this purity of blood, the 
words which once stood only for 
pride, now stand as synonyms for 
virtue. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

November 2gth. 
Now Venice, as she was once the 
most religious, was in her fall the 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 313 

most corrupt, of European states ; and 
as she was in her strength the centre 
of the pure currents of Christian 
architecture, so she is in her decline 
the source of the Renaissance. It 
was the originality and splendor of 
the palaces of Vicenza and Venice 
which gave this school its eminence 
in the eyes of Europe ; and the dying 
city, magnificent in her dissipation, 
and graceful in her follies, obtained 
wider worship in her decrepitude than 
in her youth, and sank from the midst 
of her admirers into the grave. 

— Stones of Venice. 



November ^oth. 
Of Turner's life, and of its good 
and evil, both great, but the good 



314 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

immeasurably the greater, his work is 
in all things a perfect and transparent 
evidence. His biography is simply, 
" He did this, nor will ever another 
do its like again." 

— The Queen of the Air. 



DECEMBER 



December ist. 
All the sin of men I esteem as their 
disease, not their nature ; as a folly 
which may be prevented, not a neces- 
sity which must be accepted. And 
my wonder, even when things are at 
their worst, is always at the height 
which this human nature can attain. 
Thinking it high, I find it always a 
higher thing than I thought it ; while 
those who think it low, find it, and 
will find it, always lower than they 
thought it : the fact being, that it is in- 
finite, and capable of infinite height 
and infinite fall ; but the nature of it — 
and here is the faith which I would 
have you hold with me — the nature 



318 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

of it is in the nobleness, not in the 
catastrophe. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

December 2d, 

The spirit of God is around you, 
in the air that you breathe, — His 
glory in the light that you see ; and in 
the fruitfulness of the earth, and the 
joy of its creatures. He has written 
for you, day by day. His revelation, 
as He has granted you, day by day, 
your daily bread. 

— Deucalion. 

December jd. 
All measures of reformation are ef- 
fective in exact proportion to their 
timeliness : partial decay may be cut 
away and cleansed ; incipient error 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 319 

corrected : but there is a point at 
which corruption can no more be 
stayed, nor wandering recalled. It 
has been the manner of modern phi- 
lanthropy to remain passive until that 
precise period, and to leave the sick 
to perish, and the foolish to stray, 
while it spent itself in frantic exertions 
to raise the dead, and reform the dust. 

— T/ie Qtieeu of the Air. 

December 4th, 
But God had no more pleasure in 
such sacrifice in the time of Moses 
than He has now ; He never accepted, 
as a propitiation for sin, any sacrifice 
but the single one in perspective : and 
that we may not entertain any shadow 
of doubt on this subject, the worth- 
lessness of all other sacrifice than this 



320 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

is proclaimed at the very time when 
typical sacrifice was most imperatively 
demanded. God was a spirit, and 
could be worshipped only in spirit 
and in truth, as singly and exclusively 
when every day brought its claim of 
typical and material service or offer- 
ing, as now when He asks for none 
but that of the heart. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 

December ^th. 
Above all, get quit of the absurd 
idea that Heaven will interfere to cor- 
rect great errors, while allowing its 
laws to take their course in punishing 
small ones. If you prepare a dish of 
food carelessly, you do not expect 
Providence to make it palatable ; nei- 
ther if, through years of folly, you 



FROM JOHN RVSKIN 321 

misguide your own life, need you 
expect Divine interference to bring 
round everything at last for the best. 
I tell you, positively, the world is not 
so constituted : the consequences of 
great mistakes are just as sure as those 
of small ones, and the happiness of 
your whole life, and of all the lives 
over which you have power, depends 
as literally on your own commo» 
sense and discretion as the excellence 
and order of the feast of a day. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

December 6th, 
You have had false prophets among 
you — for centuries you have had 
them — solemnly warned against them 
though you were ; false prophets, who 
have told you that all men are nothing 



322 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

but fiends or wolves, half beast, half 
devil. Believe that, and indeed you 
may sink to that. But refuse that, 
and have faith that God " made you 
upright," though jy^/^ have sought out 
many inventions ; so, you will strive 
daily to become more what your 
Maker meant and means you to be, 
and daily gives you also the power to 
be — and you will cling more and more 
to the nobleness and virtue that is in 
you, saying, " My righteousness I 
hold fast, and will not let it go.** 

— The Crotvn of Wild Olive. 

December '/th. 

It does not much matter that an 

individual loses two or three hundred 

pounds in buying a bad picture, but 

it is to be regretted that a nation 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 323 

should lose two or three hundred 
thousand in raising a ridiculous 
building. 

— Stones of Venice, 

December 8th. 
Since for every idle person some 
one else must be working somewhere 
to provide him with clothes and food, 
and doing, therefore, double the quan- 
tity of work that would be enough 
for his own needs, it is only a mat- 
ter of pure justice to compel the idle 
person to work for his maintenance 
himself. 

— The Queen of the Air, 

December gth. 
We are continually assuming that 
nations become strong according to 



324 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

their numbers. They indeed become 
so, if those numbers can be made of 
one mind ; but how are you sure you 
can stay them in one mind, and keep 
them from having north and south 
minds ? Grant them unanimous, 
how know you they will be unani- 
mous in right ? If they are unani- 
mous in wrong, the more they are, 
essentially the weaker they are. Or, 
suppose that they can neither be of one 
mind, nor of two minds, but can only 
be of no mind ? Suppose they are a 
mere helpless mob ; tottering into 
precipitant catastrophe, like a wagon- 
load of stones when the wheel comes 
off. Dangerous enough for their 
neighbors, certainly, but not " pow- 
erful." 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 325 

December loth, 
" Very probably," replied the 
dwarf; "but," and his countenance 
grew stern as he spoke, " the water 
which has been refused to the cry 
of the weary and dying, is unholy, 
though it had been blessed by every 
saint in heaven ; and the water which 
is found in the vessel of mercy is 
holy, though it had been defiled with 
corpses." 

— The King of the Golden River, 



December nth. 
All true science begins in the love, 
not the dissection, of your fellow- 
creatures ; and it ends in the love, 
not the analysis, of God. 

— Deucalion. 



326 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 12th. 
Perfect taste is the faculty of re- 
ceiving the greatest possible pleasure 
from those material sources which are 
attractive to our moral nature in its 
purity and perfection ; but why we 
receive pleasure from some forms 
and colors, and not from others, is 
no more to be asked or answered 
than why we like sugar and dislike 
wormwood. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

'December ijth. 
Yet, if any one, skilled in reading 
the torn manuscripts of the human 
soul, cares for more intimate knowl- 
edge of me, he may have it by know- 
ing with what persons in past history 
I have most sympathy. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 327 

I will name three. 

In all that is strongest and deepest 
in me, — that fits me for my work, 
and gives light or shadow to my be- 
ing, I have sympathy with Guido 
Guinicelli. 

In my constant natural temper, 
and thoughts of things and of peo- 
ple, with Marmontel. 

In my enforced and accidental tem- 
per, and thoughts of things and of 
people, with Dean Swift. 

Any one who can understand the 
natures of those three men, can un- 
derstand mine : and having said so 
much ; I am content to leave both 
life and work to be remembered or 
forgotten, as their uses may deserve. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



328 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 14th, 
There are different kinds of slaves 
and different masters. Some slaves 
are scourged to their work by whips, 
others are scourged to it by restless- 
ness or ambition. It does not mat- 
ter what the whip is ; it is none the 
less a whip, because you have cut 
thongs for it out of your own souls : 
the fact, so far, of slavery, is in being 
driven to your work without thought, 
at another's bidding. Again, some 
slaves are bought with money, and 
others with praise. It matters not 
what the purchase-money is. The 
distinguishing sign of slavery is to 
have a price, and be bought for it. 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 329 

December i^th. 
And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass 
sprang beside the new streams, and 
creeping plants grew and climbed 
among the moistening soil. Young 
flowers opened suddenly along the 
riversides, as stars leap out when 
twilight is deepening, and thickets 
of myrtle, and tendrils of vine, cast 
lengthening shadows over the valley 
as they grew. And thus the Treasure 
Valley became a garden again, and 
the inheritance, which had been lost 
by cruelty, was regained by love. 

— The King of the Golden River. 

December i6th. 
It would be difficult to overrate 
the value of the lessons which might 
be derived from a faithful study of 



330 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

the history of this strange and mighty 
city : a history which, in spite of the 
labor of countless chroniclers, remains 
in vague and disputable outline, — 
barred with brightness and shade, 
like the far away edge of her own 
ocean, where the surf and the sand- 
bank are mingled with the sky. 

— Stones of Venice. 

'December lyth. 
A great Idealist never can be ego- 
tistic. The whole of his power de- 
pends upon his losing sight and 
feeling of his own existence, and be- 
coming a mere witness and mirror of 
truth, and a scribe of visions, — al- 
ways passive in sight, passive in ut- 
terance, lamenting continually that 
he cannot completely reflect nor 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 331 

clearly utter all he has seen, — not 
by any means a proud state for a 
man to be in. 

— Frondes Agrestes. 

December i8th. 
The best women are indeed neces- 
sarily the most difficult to know ; they 
are recognized chiefly in the happi- 
ness of their husband and the noble- 
ness of their children ; they are only 
to be divined, not discerned, by the 
stranger ; and, sometimes, seem al- 
most helpless except in their homes ; 
yet without the help of one of them, 
to whom this book is dedicated, the 
day would probably have come be- 
fore now, when I should have written 
and thought no more. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 



332 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December igth. 
When a man has done his work, 
and nothing can any way be mate- 
rially altered in his fate, let him for- 
get his toil, and jest with his fate, if 
he will ; but what excuse can you 
find for wilfulness of thought, at the 
very time when every crisis of future 
fortune hangs on your decisions ? A 
youth thoughtless ! when all the hap- 
piness of his home forever depends 
on the chances, or the passions, of 
an hour ! A youth thoughtless ! 
when the career of all his days de- 
pends on the opportunity of a mo- 
ment ! A youth thoughtless ! when 
his every act is as a torch to the laid 
train of future conduct, and every 
imagination a fountain of life or 
death ! Be thoughtless in any after 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 333 

years, rather than now — though, in- 
deed, there is only one place where a 
man may be nobly thoughtless, — his 
deathbed. No thinking should ever 
be left to be done there. 

— TAe Cro%v7i of Wild Olive. 

December 20th. 
So far as education does indeed 
tend to make the senses delicate, 
and the perceptions accurate, and 
thus enables people to be pleased 
with quiet instead of gaudy color, 
and with graceful instead of coarse 
form ; and by long acquaintance with 
the best things, to discern quickly 
what is fine form from what is com- 
mon — so far acquired taste is an hon- 
orable faculty, and it is true praise of 
anything to say it is " in good taste/' 

— Frondes Ag7-estes. 



334 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 2ist. 
In these, then (and of course in all 
minor ways besides, that you can dis- 
cover in your own household), you 
must be to the best of your strength 
usefully employed during the greater 
part of the day, so that you may be 
able at the end of it to say, as proudly 
as any peasant, that you have not 
eaten the bread of idleness. 

— Sesame and Lilies. 

December 2 2d, 
Exactly in the degree in which you 
can find creatures greater than your- 
self, to look up to, in that degree, you 
are ennobled yourself, and, in that de- 
gree, happy. If you could live al- 
ways in the presence of archangels, 
you would be happier than in that of 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 335 

men ; but even if only in the com- 
pany of admirable knights and beau- 
tiful ladies, the more noble and bright 
they were, and the more you could 
reverence their virtue, the happier 
you would be. On the contrary, if 
you were condemned to live among 
a multitude of idiots, dumb, dis- 
torted, and malicious, you would 
not be happy in the constant sense 
of your own superiority. Thus all 
real joy and power of progress in 
humanity depend on finding some- 
thing to reverence, and all the base- 
ness and misery of humanity begin 
in a habit of disdain. 

— T/ie Crcrwn of Wild Olive. 

December 2jd. 
And Gluck went, and dwelt in the 
valley, and the poor were never driven 



336 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

from his door : so that his barns be- 
came full of corn, and his house of 
treasure. And, for him, the river 
had, according to the dwarf's prom- 
ise, become a River of Gold. 

And, to this day, the inhabitants 
of the valley point out the place 
where the three drops of holy dew 
were cast into the stream, and trace 
the course of the Golden River un- 
der the ground, until it emerges in 
the Treasure Valley. 

— The King of the Golden River, 



December 24th, 
If, two thousand years ago, we had 
been permitted to watch the slow set- 
tling of the slime of those turbid 
rivers into the polluted sea, and the 



FROM JOHN RUSK IN 337 

gaining upon its deep and fresh waters 
of the HfelesSj impassable, unvoyage- 
able plain, how little could we have 
understood the purpose with which 
those islands were shaped out of the 
void, and the torpid waters enclosed 
with their desolate walls of sand ! 
How httle could we have known, 
any more than of what now seems to 
us most distressful, dark, and object- 
less, the glorious aim which was then 
in the mind of Him in whose hand 
are all the corners of the earth ! how 
little imagined that in the laws which 
were stretching forth the gloomy mar- 
gins of those fruitless banks, and feed- 
ing the bitter grass among their 
shallows, there was indeed a prepara- 
tion, and the only preparation possible^ 
for the founding of a city which was 



338 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

to be set like a golden clasp on the 
girdle of the earth, to write her his- 
tory on the white scrolls of the sea- 
surges, and to word it in their thunder, 
and to gather and give forth, in 
world-wide pulsation, the glory of the 
West and of the East, from the burn- 
ing heart of her Fortitude and Splen- 
dor. 

— Stones of Venice. 



'December 2^th, 
The temper by which right taste is 
formed is characteristically patient. 
It dwells upon what is submitted to 
it. It does not trample upon it, — 
lest it should be pearls, even though 
it look like husks. 

— Frondes Agrestes, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 339 

December 26th, 
The strength is in the men, and in 
their unity and virtue, not in their 
standing room : a Httle group of wise 
hearts is better than a wilderness full 
of fools ; and only that nation gains 
true territory, which gains itself 

— The Crown of Wild Olive. 

December 2yth, 
Do not talk but of what you know ; 
do not think but of what you have 
materials to think justly upon ; and 
do not look for things only that you 
like, when there are others to be seen. 

— Time and Tide. 

December 28th, 
We are not sent into this world 
to do anything into which we cannot 
put our hearts. 

— The Seven Lamps of Architecture. 



340 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

December 2gth. 
Yet, when he had climbed for an- 
other hour, his thirst became intolera- 
ble again ; and, when he looked at his 
bottle, he saw that there were only 
five or six drops left in it, and he 
could not venture to drink. And, as 
he was hanging the flask to his belt 
again, he saw a little dog lying on the 
rocks, gasping for breath — just as 
Hans had seen it on the day of his 
ascent. And Gluck stopped and 
looked at it, and then at the Golden 
River, not five hundred yards above 
him ; and he thought of the dwarf's 
words, " that no one could succeed, 
except in his first attempt "; and he 
tried to pass the dog, but it whined 
piteously, and Gluck stopped again. 
" Poor beastie," said Gluck, " it'll be 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 341 

dead before I come down again, if I 
don't help it." Then he looked 
closer and closer at it, and its eye 
turned on him so mournfully, that he 
could not stand it. " Confound the 
King and his gold too," said Gluck; 
and he opened the flask, and poured 
all the water into the dog's mouth. 

— King of the Golden River. 

December joth, 
I hear strange talk continually, 
" how difficult it is to make people 
pay for being educated ! " Why, I 
should think so ! Do you make your 
children pay for their education, or 
do you give it them compulsorily, and 
gratis ? You do not expect them to 
pay you for their teaching, except by 
becoming good children. Why should 



342 BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS 

you expect a peasant to pay for his, 
except by becoming a good man ? — 
payment enough, I think, if we knew 
it. Payment enough to himself, as 
to us. For that is another of our 
grand popular mistakes — people are 
always thinking of education as a 
means of livelihood. Education is 
not a profitable business, but a costly 
one ; nay, even the best attainments 
of it are always unprofitable, in any 
terms of coin. No nation ever made 
its bread either by its great arts, or 
its great wisdoms. By its minor arts 
or manufactures, by its practical 
knowledges, yes : but its noble schol- 
arship, its noble philosophy, and its 
noble art, are always to be bought as 
a treasure, not sold for a livelihood. 

c^The Crown of Wild Olive, 



FROM JOHN RUSKIN 343 

December jist. 
And so I wish you all good speed, 
and the favor of Hercules and of the 
Muses ; and to those who shall best 
deserve them, the crown of Parsley 
first and then of the Laurel. 

— The Queen of the Air. 



; 



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